Where's Your Heart?

To start off the new year, I began rereading a book by Bob Kauflin called Worship Matters.  It's a great book on worship and I highly recommend it to anyone involved in worship leadership.  In one of the beginning chapters Kauflin talks about all of the things that we have made worship out to be:  music, techniques, liturgies, songs, traditions, methods, technology, etc...  Kauflin then points out that while each one of those can certainly contribute to worship, they are not what true worship is all about.  Ultimately, worship is about our hearts.  It’s about what and who we love more than anything. 

Jesus said in Matthew 22:37- “You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind” (emphasis mine).  Jesus wants our hearts.  He wants us to love Him more than we love music, our ministries, our loved ones or even our own lives. 

So, as a worship leader, where’s your heart?  What or who do you love the most?  Is it Jesus or is it someone or something else?  I think if we’re being honest, we can all think of times that the # 1 focus of our hearts during worship hasn’t been on Jesus.  And here’s the scary part that Kauflin describes so well from his own struggles with this in his book:  “I learned that I could lead others in worshiping God and be worshiping something else in my own heart”.

Yikes!

Just think about that.  We lead others in worshiping Jesus while at the same time our hearts are far from Him (Isaiah 29:13).  And what’s sad is that I know that I’ve been there and done that far too many times.  It’s so easy for my focus to be on the other things in life that I enjoy, love, or am looking forward to.  And there’s nothing wrong with loving or enjoying other aspects of our lives (family, friends, sports, vacations, etc…).  But you can’t really enjoy and love those things the right way until you love Jesus the most.  And so as worship leaders, our main concern each and every time that we lead can’t be on what songs we are singing, what the lighting will be, or what the song transitions are.  Our main concern has to be the state and focus of our hearts.

So, where’s your heart?

Worship Big!

Brad