As we continually strive to honor God with our gifts of worship, we need to set realistic expectations. Even though we may desire perfectionism, we have to acknowledge the fact that we will never be perfect and that God does not expect us to be perfect. He can take our imperfections and use them for His good. What we really need to do, then, is understand that there is a greater purpose at work than ours; a "big picture" per se.
For a small portion of us, this realization that we don't need to shoulder the burden of making sure that we worship perfectly in order to bring about God's will is a great relief. For a larger portion of us, we need to work on the extremely difficult task of stepping back, becoming vulnerable, and allowing God to use our imperfections for His good.
The first step in this is realizing that our expectations need to come from God; not from our own prognosis of what we think worship should look, sound, or feel like. Noland states, "We need to give our expectations over to Him and exchange them for what He expects, not what we expect. We might be expecting artistic perfection, that might be the furthest thing from God's mind. Try to keep the big picture in mind. God cares about all the details of our artistic endeavors, but He's also in the business of saving souls. What's more important? That our efforts come off perfectly or that God's name be praised and that lost people come to know Him through our ministry? Try to keep things in His perspective" (Noland, 135).
Yet, this doesn't mean that we now get to play Parcheesi during rehearsals instead of working diligently through our worship music. Conversely, this means that we need to ever work harder on opening our ears to hear what the Lord is wanting of us and our spiritual gifts. "He expects us to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with Him (Mic. 6:8). God expects us to grow spiritually. The end result is His responsibility. Our job is to cooperate with the process. We put so much pressure on ourselves to be perfect (the end product), when God is more concerned with the process (that we walk humbly with Him)" (Noland, 135).
There are countless examples of ways that we have become more concerned with the end result than with allowing God's process to work in our lives. Unfortunately, many of these examples come with some embarrassment of knowing that we caused the uncomfortable conundrum by not following God's direction. Sadly, many of these lessons were learned in hindsight. This prompts our reflection questions:
How do we know that we are following God's big picture of saving souls instead of our own unrealistic expectations?
What can we do on a daily/weekly/monthly basis to ensure that we are in a place to be able to hear what God is saying?
We have so many ways to know God's will and His desires for His people. The greatest book ever written was put there for that single purpose. So that we could know Him enough to worship Him well. When we pray we become closer, when we do nothing more than consider God and His ways we put ourselves in a frame of mind that allows him to work through us without the resistance caused by a mind wandering around like a concussed monkey. All we have to do is follow what we know to be true. The problem is that I need Him to remind me every few seconds or so becuase I have no measureable attention span. I know, without having to go find a book or a pastor, exactly what I want and how I would like what I want to happen. I'm a lost sinner with a north star being occluded by the smog created by the world I inhabit. I have no doubt that God can lead us through, but we have to be responsible for ourselves and each other. We have to read, pray, counsel, and we have to be together as a family of believers living for God in a way that other lost souls wish to emmulate. And some kind of pastry should be used as sinner bate.
ReplyDeleteLarry
Knowing if we are truly following God's big picture and not our own expectations we have to examine our heart. We may have the best intentions but if we are not tuned into God then we are in control when God should be. Still - it is hard to know and we need the help of fellow believers to keep us on track. They can tell us, in love, when we are putting our own plans in front of God's.
ReplyDeleteOn a daily, weekly, monthly basus we can ensure that we are in a place able to hear what God is saying by keeping Him as our focus. Through study, worship, fellowship and sometimes silence we can keep our hearts open to hearing God. The clutter of life is our biggest hurdle - we are selfish beings and when we naturally focus on "my needs" "my wants" "my hurts" "my glory" we must make the concious choice to trun back to God every day, every second.
Wendi
As of late...just because I am getting used to the praise band and playing more intensely than what I have ever done in the past, I don't think that I'm focusing on perfection...but just keeping up! Like being at the Keyboard when it's time and begin starting a song when I'm suppose to ! I have been challenging myself to ask God to show me who to talk with between services and to bridge the gap I think could happen, with me being in the praise band and thinking "I'm pretty cool" , vs. there are people in the congregation that need to get a connection with the "big picture" with the vision of MLPC. I don't know if it goes as far as saving them in that one conversation, but I think it's important for them to know they count and it's important to be there, whether they have been coming for years or if it's their first time. Just opening a door in conversation can lead to ...I don't know so the rest is up to God...
ReplyDeleteThe real point in not having "unrealistic expectations" is for me...what is REAL for me in my life at this time...I remember being in the worship team in my 30's , taking care of 5-12 kids 24/7 from infants to teenagers, have meals prepared, schedules to organize,
chores around the ranch to do, keep my husband happy,assisting pastors that lived nearly next door, early a.m. bible studies, outreaches to the community...and I was still wondering if God was happy with me yet....hummmm.
So the question posted...what are realistic expections.?..keeping a positive and loving attitude with my family, and making time with the people God has put in my path in our new town, neighborhood in ML....
Pam
Larry ....
ReplyDeletewandering Around like a concussed monkey...
...LOL
Pam
Thanks for your help acclimating to Worship team!