This is day twenty-one of twenty-one days of posts between January 10th and January 30th of 2021. This is the last day of the fast. Hello again to those who read previous days, and hello to those of you who may have stumbled across this post “out of order”. You should go back and read from Day 1, for a few reasons. It explains why I am doing this. It is the first one, and I may make reference to something in it in this post. It also has a list with each day’s post (once they are available) and you can jump to whatever topic you are interested in. Thanks for reading!
We made it! Day twenty-one has arrived and this is the last post in this series. This is the last official day of the fast, but the church doesn’t consider the fast over until noon tomorrow. That’s fair. I’ve written many times how music affects my mood and my thoughts, but this post will deal with how music affects the worship service, at least for me. Not everyone will feel the same way and some may feel that I am focusing on the wrong thing, but this is how I feel, so I thought I would share.
I like good music. I like a wide variety of music, but I like good music. That goes for worship music as well. I’m not alone in my desire for worship music to be good, and not in a vain way, but because I want the music we as a congregation lift up to the Lord to be the best it can be, because he deserves that.
Poorly done music, to me, can turn a potentially good worship experience to bad. I know that I shouldn’t rate or rank worship experiences like that, but my humanity jumps in the way of my holiness in this regard. It is one thing if the worship band or choir or whoever is leading worship is performing to the best of their abilities and it is still not good to my ears. It’s another thing if the worship band or choir or whoever is not prepared, or appears to not be putting their all into the music.
It can seriously sour the worship experience and as much as I might try, I will be distracted, both during the performance and after, as my memory replays the music in my head. I confess, again, this should not be the case, but this is an area I am still working on. It is directly tied to mercy, which I lack at times. Once my ability to dispense mercy is better developed, maybe this aversion to “bad” worship music will go away.
Thankfully, our church is blessed with fabulous singers and musicians who put their all into the act of worship, by preparing and practicing and then worshiping as they lead. It is one of the things I am most thankful for in regards to my church, mainly because of my aversion to bad music in general. This is not to say everything else is of lower quality, just that I am more thankful for the gifts God has given us in regard to musicians.
This post has turned out to be more confession than explanation, and that is OK. It is good to confess our shortcomings and then attempt to work through them. We are told this many times in the Bible, most explicitly in 1 John.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
1 John 1:9
So, here I am, confessing my need, in my humanity, for the worship music to be good to my ears so that I will worship fully. I am admitting that bad worship music will throw me off from concentrating on the intent and purpose of worship, and keep my thoughts occupied even after the music stops, to the detriment of the sermon.
Lord, help me to look past the sound of the music and concentrate on the purpose and intent of worship, to give You the praise You deserve.
Thank you for reading over these twenty-one days. If you missed any of the posts, you can jump to Day 1 to check the list and go straight to any you may have missed or want to read again.
Featured Image: Photo by Matt Botsford on Unsplash