Ok…So I have an idea! I am really excited about it and hope I can keep with it. Sometimes I forget things I started. I have so many papers laying around to remind me what I’m supposed to be doing, but I eventually stop looking at them. But the idea…
I have had the privilege and challenge of leading songs at a church (Journey: A Community of Grace, in Louisville) for about nine months now. I’m seeing how my different gifts and experiences are being used now on a weekly basis; I’m seeing that leading worship is about way more than singing, playing, and keeping a band together. My strongest spiritual gifts are encouragement and teaching, and those naturally come out in the worship leader position. I have one task and it is from the Lord–I am to be a friend to the Bridegroom. As His friend, I am to hear His heart, declare His love, and urge the Bride into deeper fellowship until He returns. And that is why I call it a privilege and a challenge!
So the idea I have that I think the Lord has laid on my heart is to start at Genesis and go through the Bible looking for characters and stories that reveal God’s heart for intimacy with mankind. Who really knew Him? What did He say to them? How does He show in His Word how He feels about us? Sort of as a side note, when it comes up in Scripture, I also want to include this thought: How is music – worshipping through singing and playing instruments, dancing, clapping, raising hands, putting prayers to tunes – useful in this intimacy with God?
Each week, I want to highlight a different character and passage of Scripture in this blog and then share that main idea also on Sunday morning. We come to church sometimes a little out of it. We come to every day sometimes a little out of it, do we not? We need something to stir our hearts and remind us of what matters, or at least I know I do! And what matters is nearness, communion, with the Lover of our souls. My prayer is that in highlighting these passages about deep and genuine relationship with God we will see a seamless living love story…and that we will choose to go all in, making it our story, rearranging life until it is truly His living in us.
