To Be a Child

There is a certain innocence about children that adults can clearly see, but not always fully understand. Children are wise, aware, and incredibly understanding - yet they maintain a certain air about themselves that leaves adults wondering, desperately straining to remember what it was like to be so... free. We have forgotten what it is like to be a child.

This desire stems from the seed that God has planted in the heart of every single man and woman who has ever lived. God created Man to worship Him, and so He has given every man that urge - though it may be satisfied in ways God had not intended. To worship is "to feel or express reverence or adoration." To worship is to be like the child who stands before his parents in adoration. To worship is to look upon the face of God with such love-struck awe that it impossible to be stolen away by anything else. It is not a matter of music. It is not art. It is 100% pure and innocent admiration and adoration offered up by the creation to his Creator. It is the call upon each and every one of our lives - why we were made: to worship the God who created life itself.

Those who enter the Kingdom of Heaven will enter "as a child." Not literally in the form of a child -- I can't imagine Heaven being like a giant playground -- but with the heart of a child. We enter through Heaven's gates with a heart that is so pure and untainted by the distractions in this world that all we desire to do is to look upon the face of our Maker. To stand before Him and hear that He is proud of us and pleased with what we've done is, like a child, our greatest pride and joy.

Worship, therefore, is the most passion-filled act that any person on this earth can do. It is the source of where we find purpose on this earth. It is the privilege of heart-felt communion with God Himself, and He delights in it just as a father delights in his children.

God has called worshipers who will worship Him "in spirit and in truth." Not "in jumping and in solid harmonies." This is not to say that music or jumping is bad - it is just not, in my opinion, the source of worship itself. It is simply in those forms that the outpouring of praise and adoration happen -- it is the avenue by which we can express our pure love and adoration and awe to God. And it is in this true worship that He delights. A tongue-tied toddler's worship is, if offered in spirit and in truth, more pleasing to God than the worship of incredibly talented, yet heartless, worship bands.

That is my aim as a worship leader -- not to be focused on the music so much as where my own heart lies; whether, based on the position of my heart, my worship is worthy of God's ears. It's hard. I'm such a perfectionist (and musician) that I really desire the music to be as great as it possibly can be -- however, God desires a heart of worship. Music will come later. All I have to do at this point is be as a child, and God will handle the rest.