Recently, I was given 2 opportunities to serve at a Campus Crusade Freshmen Orientation Camp. One, I was an orientation group leader, who was to facilitate all the group activities through the camp. Two, to fill up a void, I decided to step up as a worship leader during one of the camp message segments. It was through serving in the latter role that God taught me experientially an invaluable truth of life. Frankly, when I was asked if I could lead worship, I couldn’t help but feel hesitant about it. In my entire life, I have only led worship one other time in a big group setting. And that was with only one other instrument – the guitar. But now, to lead worship with a band, in front of a hall of strangers (for a solid half-hour), coupled with the fact that I get stage fright, would be something really daunting. However, after much consideration, I felt that God was prompting me to take a step of faith. Hence, I gave the worship coordinator the green light to lead.
I seriously struggled through the preparation phase. It was something almost entirely new to me. With no prior experience of how I should select the songs to sing, I was contemplating between choosing songs that I can sing versus songs that the congregation would be touched by. At the back of my head, I had a few songs that I really liked to sing, which I know I could pull off without embarrassing myself in front of a large audience. I was tempted to select songs that I know I could sing well, so as to cover up my acute fear of stage fright.
But suddenly, I realised that I was going in the wrong direction. I felt that I was being disobedient to what God has taught me about worship. He has taught me that leading worship isn’t about leading people to sing songs, but about pointing people to God. He has taught me that worship isn’t about the time of singing itself, but rather, the turning of hearts to Him, at all possible times. That was when my favourite verse flashed across my mind, but illuminating a new truth about worship to me. Romans 12: 1b says “….offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship (or my NASB says ‘service’)’. It suddenly dawned upon me that worship takes more than the time I was going to so-called ‘lead worship’. I realised that worship takes every single time, every single hour of offering myself as a living sacrifice to God. This literally meant that every single moment of my life ought to be worship, for it says – this is your spiritual act of worship – a living sacrifice. As such, it was necessary first to turn hearts and lives to Him, instead of bothering about which songs I should be singing.
A few days before the camp, I still struggled to no avail to select the appropriate songs. It was as if God was silent throughout or playing a sick joke on me. I was pressed for time, yet I couldn’t work through my mental block. I was almost freaking out. But I kept praying and praying. It was only till the 2nd last night before the camp that I strongly sensed the Lord urging me to lead worship not via something outside of me, but something that is within me – that is the truth he convicted me about during my own quiet time. There were 1, if not 2 firm truths, that I learnt during my meditations.
The first was how to come before the Lord. I suddenly realised the woeful state of myself when coming before the Lord. So many times, I come, not to God, but as a God. I come, thinking that I am entitled to come, thinking that God has no right to reject me. That was when I read Psalms 24:3-4 – ‘Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol’ – and grasped the reality of who I was in relation to a Holy God. I saw the impurity of my heart, the dirtiness and filthiness of my hands from sin. I saw my idolatry, my love for so many other things in my life. I saw my heart as an alloy, a mixture of so many loves, when God wanted my heart to be pure, and one, and focused, and totally committed to Him and Him alone. From there, the songs came. I suddenly felt convicted first to share this truth through the song “Give us clean hands”, which spoke a new reality to me. And then, one after another, “Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise”, “There is none like you”, “Only you”, and “All I once held dear”. Each song spoke of a reality I experienced about God, and each gave due praises to who God really is – His character and His ways.
Even till the very night of leading worship itself, amidst tiredness from playing games, amidst being displaced from my comfort zone and forced to interact with people, amidst the fear and trembling from needing to speak in front of a large audience, God told me to place my trust in Him and not in myself. I kept looking at my incapabilities and my fears, but God told me to gaze upon the richness of His grace and the power of His might. There were fears that I would say the wrong thing, sing a wrong key or not lead the session well. I was literally trembling so hard that my pianist had to pray for me before the session began. But when the session started, God took over. Suddenly everything felt into place. God guided my lips and my voices, and most importantly He guided the hearts of His people. He wasn’t at all costs going to allow my incapabilities hinder His great work of turning hearts back to Him. He led. He came and convicted the hearts of men. Suddenly when leading, my fears faded away. Although I was facing everyone, I was standing before the audience of one – the Lord God Almighty. I suddenly wasn’t aware of my inabilities any more. All I knew was that I saw myself along with a congregation of people whose hearts were turning to God. They were singing praises to Him. I wasn’t leading them; I was among them. I was one of them. And it was God who was leading us. It was God who was empowering us to serve Him.
On hindsight, I read a short chapter of a book by Watchman Nee yesterday and the most beautiful of all truths were revealed and reaffirmed in me – that it takes God to serve God. Men cannot serve God. We will fail. No matter how hard we try, our power is just insufficient. We need the incomprehensive power of Almighty God working through the Holy Spirit in us.
Colossians 1:29 says “To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me”. It was extremely difficult for me to lead worship. I struggled, but I experienced the power of another that came to my aid. There was a higher power that worked so powerfully in me. For this, I dare claim no glory. For if I was able to do it, I would have gotten the glory. But because I am unable, because I am part a weak helpless man, the one who came to my aid gets the glory. The glory belongs to Him. It is ALL His.
Watchman Nee writes “I cannot please God, therefore from henceforth ‘I’ am not going to please God. But that does not mean that you will not please God at all. The thing is ‘I’ will not do it. I know it is utter futility to do it, to serve the Lord with ‘my’ powers, trying to come up to His standard of life. So the cross cuts here also into my natural power as trying to please God in my life. I refuse to have anything to do with that, I will only trust the Spirit to bring that out in me. I am not going to produce that for God, I will trust God to produce that in me”
This is what I learnt. Serving God with our own power seems like legitimate or even conmmendable thing to do. But it is abomination to God, no less. This is because if we can serve God with our natural powers, it is ‘us’ that gets the glory, it is ‘us’ that is strong. But God wants to get ALL the glory, because only a God like Him is worthy of ALL the glory. He wants us dependent on Him at ALL times, for all service. Like Watchman Nee writes, “The trouble with so many christians is that they have only changed their subject of interest (serving God), but they have not changed their power and energy (it still remains at the self)”. We need to change our power and energy as well – and it all goes back to the cross.
“The ground of Christ’s death and resurrection is the ground of our acceptance with God. The principle of Christ’s death and resurrection is the condition and the basis of our service to God” We need to die to self, only then can we be alive to God and able to serve Him. That, my friends, is also worship.
