Ministry To The Lord


 
In Paul Baloche's Youtube series titled "Leading Worship" he emphasizes the freedom in which he uses music for the purpose of communing with God on an individual level. He points out an important idea demonstrated in 1 Chronicles where the priests would come and minister to the Lord in the temple despite no one being there. The key was their individual ministering to the Lord. Baloche describes his own practice in which he comes into the empty sanctuary and simply dwells in the presence of God. A practical step that he highlights is memorizing songs so that he is able to play and sing as he feels led. He makes it clear that it's not about being on pitch, in time, or in tune, but rather connecting with the Lord. 

What stands out to me is that everything Baloche does is prompted by the Spirit. Nothing is scripted or planned. The Apostle Paul warns against living by The Law rather than the Spirit. When we primarily seek the stirrings of the Spirit rather than legalistic focus of the Law, God brings out the best in us, and Baloche demonstrates that. Galatians 5:25 calls the follower of Jesus to "walk in the Spirit", so that every move would be in faith, vindicated by the Holy Spirit. I pray that my heart would go ultra-sensitive to the Spirit so that I'd be mindful of its convictions and have the will to act upon them. 
 

Comments

  1. AnonymousAugust 27, 2020 at 1:33 PM

    I love everything you wrote! I love how you added verses, for it helped visualize what you were saying. I love how you made the connection with what Paul was saying to the Spirit. My favorite part is when you wrote that God brings out the best in us. If we should look up to anyone, we should look up to God :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Performance vs Worship Leading

Paul Baloche makes it clear that a worship centered environment begins from the "top down", in the episode "Performance vs Worship Leading". It is the worship leaders' responsibility to guide the congregation into a time of musical worship, but not to worship for them. This is dependent on where the leaders' heart is oriented toward. There will always be the temptation of worshipping for the sake of satisfying the ego, but it's clear that the whole purpose of worship is lost when that desire overshadows the heart to serve. Baloche also points out that in the pursuit of being fully oriented toward the Lord, there's no place for "fake humility", as he puts it. The Lord knows the inmost desires of the heart so there's no reason to put on a fake persona in an effort to follow him. The idea of fighting against the temptation of self glory ties in to what Jesus means when he calls us to "deny ourselves, and take up our own cross". T...
Read more

The Feeling of the Message

Paul Baloche talks about crafting music to fit the "feeling of the message" in this episode of his Youtube Songwriting series. He points out that the first step is deciding what type of atmosphere the song is intended to create. For example, his title "Above All" was meant to be an anthemic song, thus he chose a tune that fit its intended purpose accordingly. Baloche mentions Disney as the king of melodies, noting how many of their songs have beautifully constructed tunes that capture a breadth of pitches which earn a place in our memories. Hints of the styles of these well-written songs are prevalent in other genres of music, further highlighting their brilliance.  The idea of being memorable is an intriguing one. In the context of songwriting, the tunes that are generic and aren't creatively put together are the ones that fade with time. It's the ones that are different, seasoned with flair; those are the ones that are remembered. We must seek to find our ...
Read more

How to Write a Worship Song

In Phil Wickham's workshop titled "How to Write a Worship Song", he outlines the general process by which he writes worship songs. He highlights the importance of life experiences and how they shape themes of songs. Wickham uses the example of God's goodness. Even though it's a common theme among worship songs today, it's possible to experience a different and more personal facet of the the goodness of God to kickstart of worship song. The idea of finding intricacies within themes to write songs is stressed multiple times by Wickham in the workshop.  Wickham describes writing a song like formulating a sentence. A good sentence has a topic with grammatical tools that assist in emphasizing that subject. In the same way, a song also has a topic that's usually amplified in the chorus. The verses and bridge are similar to verbs and adjectives that highlight the importance and applicability of that topic. When we think of songs as sentences, it should demand us ...
Read more