Weakness and Worship

I had an interesting day yesterday. Usually Sam leads worship for our Sunday night service, and I speak the message. Well, Sam was in Boise this weekend, leading worship and signing papers on his new house he bought. So I was given worship duties, and our new pastor Kevin preached. Let me give you a little rundown of my thoughts on leading worship. I usually stress out when I have to lead, especially if I am leading by myself. While I love music, playing guitar, piano, drums, whatever, I have quite little confidence in my vocal abilities. Consequently I usually shy away from leading with my voice and would rather just participate in the instrumental side of worship. Unfortunately, there was no other option last night. I was in charge of leading. I got everything set up in the afternoon, but I was a bit nervous for the evening. A couple hours before service started, Kevin introduced me to a friend of his, Paul, who graciously offered to help with worship. Paul and I ran through the set once, and after that there was about an hour before the service started. My feelings: I felt like worship was going to go poor/average, I didn't think we sounded together musically, I felt like I couldn't sing in tune, and I was literally resigned to the fact that this would be the last time I would try to lead worship because I was expecting it to go so poorly.

The service started, I led and felt the Spirit moving. I didn't feel too confident in my voice still, but with Paul's background vocals, I felt like God used us and it went well. The Spirit of God showed up and worked in me, and I didn't feel like I messed things up too much or sung too off key.

After the service was over, Kevin came up to me and thanked me for leading. I just thought he was being gracious and I thanked him for the compliment, but then he went on to say that he was really blessed by the worship, that he firmly believed I have a gift for leading worship, and that numerous other people had come up to him afterwards and said how much they appreciated the worship. I was blown away. I told Kevin that I was planning on telling him he could find someone else to lead worship for the next while because I didn't feel adequate to do it, and Kevin told me that he doesn't want anyone else to lead at all. He wants to use me for as long as I'm here. He proceeded to compliment me on some of the aspects of the worship leading, and I was incredibly blessed. It's crazy how much your perspective can change in just a few hours. I went from thinking I would be involved at worship leading much to thinking it could be a gift of mine. I was clearly being a little too proud and audacious to think that the quality of worship depended on my own vocal abilities. God got his glory, and he used us to allow people to worship him. I suppose you can get things confused and backwards when you start focusing on your own abilities instead of what God can do through you. This situation brought to my mind Paul's words about boasting in his weaknesses, for then God is strong.

I just thought I'd post that, because I feel like I am excited now to see what God has in store for me and to further develop some possible giftings of mine. Whatever happens, it's God working in me that causes the good to happen.

Also, I just fount out I AM NOW AN UNCLE!!!!!! Little Eli Joshua Pettis was born today around 3.15pm at 7lb4oz and 20 inches. Congrats DJ and Charese!