i am an offering

It’s Valentine’s Day and we all know what that means.  A lot of people will be sappily celebrating superficial love, a lot of peope will be miserably lamenting their lack of love, and, a lot of people will be honoring each other with the love that the Bible talks about.

Don’t get me wrong, I actually really enjoy Valentine’s Day, but I think it encourages society to view love as something temporary or something that can be bought, and that if you don’t have someone “loving” you on this day, your life is pitiful.  I was glad to see an article on MSN that encouraged people to celebrate their singleness and just plain enjoy the day and realize that it’s really overrated, but I was also sad to see that when I searched for blogs on Valentine’s day, so many people were miserable that they wouldn’t be getting the gifts that everybody else was getting.

So, MSN says that Valentine’s Day love is overrated.  Could it be perhaps that the world’s view of love in general  is overrated?  I think so.  Fairy tales end “happily ever after,” but that is not the case in many of real-life’s stories.  People blog that if they had a date or someone to buy them something on this day, they’d feel loved and happy, yet when the flowers wilt and the day goes away, that happiness could very well turn into a nightmare.

So what is real love?  Jesus says in John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this: that he lay down his life for his friends.”  This same man went on to do just that; lay down His life for all of us so that we could be free.  Jesus also calls us to daily “deny yourself, take up your cross and follow” Him.  And Paul tells us as husbands to “love our wives as Christ loved the church, and gave up Himself for her.”

So how do we apply those things to offer ourselves to God and to others with true, Biblical love?

• Die to ourselves.  Our desires are not to come first.  We die to our pride and deny our desires so that we can follow Jesus first of all.  Then we put aside our pride and desires, sacrificing what we want in order to show true love to our spouses, family and friends.
• Be willing to lay down our lives.  Are we willing to give every area of our life to Jesus?  Every area?  Are we willing to die for someone we say we love?  If you aren’t willing to die for your wife, husbands, you do not have Biblical love as Paul teaches.  If you aren’t willing to lay down everything in your life for Jesus, do you really love Him, or do you just believe in Him?
• Be a living sacrifice.  Every day, realize what is holding you back from loving Jesus and your spouse more, and take it to the Cross and leave it there.

Are you a life-long learner?  I used to be so bored with school and used to not care about it at all.  I am working through some issues in my life that really hindered how good of a student I could have been.  And I am finally learning to actually want to learn.

Part of learning is being responsible.   And unfortunately for me, I’m learning responsibility the hard way.

If you have (or are planning to get) a nice instrument (for example, a Martin DXME Dreadnaught acoustic guitar), take care of it!  You know that little booklet that came with it that says, “The care and feeding of your Martin guitar?”  Yeah.  Read it!  You know the advice that the people at the music store give you?  Yeah.  Listen to them!  You know those little humidifiers that you can buy to keep your instrument in good shape?  Buy them and use them. You can also get a hygrometer which monitors the temperature and relative humidity in your instrument case.  Way cool.

Unfortunately, a temperature change and me not taking responsibility for my instrument has caused the top to cave in and dry out.  There is maybe some hope that with re-humidification I can salvage it, but I’m not getting my hopes too high.

 So, the lesson I have learned is that if you have an opportunity to learn something new, do it.  Don’t just glance at the instruction booklet and toss it to the side and hope you’ll do things right.

With that in mind, if you are a life-long learner and you are interested in knowing more about things involved with worship within the church, Worship Leader magazine is going to be offering online correspondence courses that look awesome!  They range from song-writing to production to sound mixing to personal accountability.  They are going to be offering these courses for $39.  You can find the general information here or you can register here.  The only problem I have with these is that they are only 1-hour long classes.  $40 for 1 hour seems a bit steep, but at least they’re offering them!

So, always keep learning, and hopefully you’ll avoid learning the hard way.

Please let my guitar be okay, please please please

*Well, as of today, March, 2nd, my guitar is actually looking like it’s going to be revived!  I’ve been making sure to keep it humidified and trying to get it back to the right level of humidity, and right now there’s still a little bit of a warp in it, but it plays beautifully again!  Hopefully it will completely un-warp.

Craig Groeschel just taught a great series which included thoughts about people doing too much and therefore getting burnt out.  He’s also started a series of blog posts on the subject.  I think this concept applies to everyone in church ministry, and it’s something I desperately need to work on.  So, worship leaders/tech directors, are you one who does the following:

• Won’t allow another worship leader to lead because you’re afraid they won’t do it right?
• Always micro-managing the video projection or mixer instead of teaching your servants to do it?
• Not equipping your servants well, and consequently having things fall apart when you happen to be gone?

I have been guilty of all of the above and need to shift my thinking.  There are a lot more, but the truth is, Biblically, we are called to assess what our gifts are and know what we do well; realize we can’t do everything, so therefore equip others to help us; and let go of our pride that says that it will only be successful if we do it.

 When we constantly need to do things ourselves, we do two things:  we give ourselves the burden and we make ourselves the focus.  We need to let others help lighten our loads so that they, too can be involved, and we need to make Jesus the focus and not ourselves.

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
       test me and know my anxious thoughts.

 See if there is any offensive way in me,
       and lead me in the way everlasting.
Psalm 139:23-24

How often do we ask God to search our hearts?

It seems like so often we’re asking God to be with this person, or be with this situation, or help me get through this, or help me with this.  Yet the man Scripture says was “after God’s own heart” asked Him on several occasions to search his heart.

Sometimes we wonder why God isn’t molding us, or helping us with a certain situation, and yet we haven’t asked God to search our hearts, see if there be any offensive way in us and lead us.  We want God to lead our lives, but yet we don’t ask Him.

This has really been on my heart lately, that God would search my heart and get rid of the things that stand in the way of my relationship with Him.  I’m in the process of writing a song about it.

So, God, search my heart, and help me serve You more.