A Posture of the Heart

I found this the Facebook page of a worship leader that I have liked for a long time - Jami Smith.

"Do we sing songs to God or about God? Vertical or horizontal? I think we need a healthy blend of both. Worship is a posture of the heart. If you can’t worship with hymns, there’s a heart problem. If you can’t worship without music, there’s a heart problem. If you need “I Can Only Imagine” to be able to worship, there’s a heart problem. You need to be able to worship with a song that maybe you’ve never heard before. Your heart has to want to connect with God to the point that even if you don’t know the song, you’re going to read the lyrics and listen to it and take it in anyway. There’s no difference in the way your heart responds. Otherwise, if you need your favorite worship song to worship, well then maybe you’re worshipping that song.

About five to six years into worship leading, I hit a period of time when I couldn’t go to church and worship. I was critiquing everything. Oh, that was a cool transition. Oh, what chords is he playing? (I’m all focused on his hands.” That’s a neat idea, let’s try that. I couldn’t worship. God was going, “This is supposed to be about Me, and you can’t separate the leader who wants to have good ideas and do a good job in worship from the one who just wants to worship Me in church.” I found I could go o a Catholic mass and worship more fully. That was out of my world, so I could just focus on Jesus."

It has challenged me to think about my posture of worship. And I hope it makes you stop and think, as well...