Amy Marie

We focus a lot on our heart towards God. We try to develop a passion for who he is and what He has done in our lives.  We learn and grow, and we try to strengthen our relationship with God.  I think that we spend a lot of time focusing on this. That’s a good thing right!?  After all isn’t God incredible!  Everything that he has done for us is amazing.  Reflecting on Gods love and the sacrifice that Jesus made so that we could be saved is humbling.  It drives you to want to have a deeper relationship with incredible and indescribable God.  I think that it is important though to talk not just about how we interact with God but also how we interact with each other. More specifically, what’s the best way for a worshiper to interact and relate to a worship leader?

            Jesus said that the greatest commandment is that we love the Lord our God with everything that we have and that we love each other as ourselves.  This tells me that just as important as understanding our relationship with God is a need for understanding our relationships with each other.  What does a Christian relationship look like, how is Christian love expressed.  Jesus spent a lot of time teaching about how to relate to each other.  Lately I’ve been thinking on this and praying about it.  I had an experience recently that caught me off guard.

            I was at a worship workshop that our church does once a month for all or our worship leaders.  Amy and I being kids church worship leaders were there also.  The first thing that we did was spend some time worshiping God together.  Our worship pastor brought in a worship leader from another church so that all of our teams could take a break and just enter in to worship.  The worship leader that he brought in is an old friend that i’ve known for a few years. He’s an extremely gifted worship leader and he really did a great job that morning. The whole morning was very encouraging and we left feeling renewed and strengthened.  At the end of the worship set I was thinking of how meaningful this time had been, and how much I appreciated that our friend had come to lead worship for us. In my mind I decided that I would go encourage this worship leader.  I thought. “I will tell him that he’s so awesome, that he’s amazing, and I love him so much” All of the sudden I caught myself.  I felt the Holy Sprit grab my attention.  I realized that I was about to praise a man for something that God did.  The words that I was about to speak were words that really should be reserved for God.  After all it was because of Him that worship was incredible.

            Don’t get me wrong were supposed to encourage each other. Paul told Timothy to “encourage one another, and all the more as you see the day approaching” You have to be careful what you say and why.  I don’t want to praise a person for something that Happened because of God.  I love encouraging people.  I pray often that I can see people as God does and that God would use me to draw the best out of people through saying encouraging words.  But we must be careful not to credit a person for doing something that was actually God.  The next day after we lead worship for kids praise a couple of the leaders came over to encourage us and say it seemed that the kids were really getting into it.  I realized that there is a difference between encouraging a person for the purpose of building them up and putting that person in a place of praise.  Where instead of praising God for showing doing something you praise a man.

            It reminds me of when Jesus entered into Jerusalem on the donkey.  Everyone lined the road yelling “hosanna”! I once heard a preacher say that God had to deal with him about thinking that he was hot stuff because of what God was doing through him. He said it’s the same thing as if the Donkey that Jesus rode thinking that all of those people were praising him and not Jesus.  Honestly were all just dirt donkeys.  The only thing that makes us special is the fact that we are dirty donkeys that carry Jesus with us. 

            As worshippers and worship leaders we have to be careful that Praise is directed towards God and not to the man.  After all “Every good and perfect thing comes from God” My prayer is that I can both praise God and strengthen the people of God so that we can all see him move more powerfully in our life.