Leading worship = working hard?

I, for one, always thought that leading a congregation into worship demands lots and lots of work. As a worship leader you have to ‘lead’ people into worship. For me ‘leading’ meant almost ‘dragging’ them into worship with everything I had.

Based on this idea I used everything: clapping, dancing, speaking, shouting, smiling and sing as good as I possibly could. Don’t understand me wrong, those things are not bad in itself at all, but they are if you are trying way too hard and forget who you really are.

So, ‘working hard’, ‘trying’, ‘fighting for it’ and ‘striving’ are terms which fitted quite well in my life. Until I was so burned up I hit rock bottom causing me to lose two years of my life due to a burn-out. However, despite this extremely difficult time, I have learned something extremely valuable: I don’t have to try/work so hard…

I know this isn’t some enormous revelation on itself…but apparently I had been living with that lie for quite some time. God says that we should trust Him and can just walk in His power. And therefore not in our own power. That saves a lot of energy and unnecessary frustration.

So, let Him do the job; the only thing we have to do is to ‘plug in’ into His Spirit and led Him lead, worship Him and the rest will be given unto you. Then, His Spirit will work through you and touch people’s heart. You cannot make other people worship but through worshipping yourself there will be an atmosphere of worship and the rest is up to themselves. They can make the decision to step into that atmosphere and worship God.

What could happen then is awesome. A while ago I had to lead the worship during a teenage meeting including 1,000 adults. These adults were not used to these kinds of teenage meetings. Someone told me: “good luck to lead the 1,000 adults into worship”. Normally, I would have thought the exact same thing. But I did not needed ‘good luck’, because I am allowed to stand in His power and worship Him. I did that and God did the rest: the Holy Spirit came with fire and joy, and touched almost every adult. They joined the dancing, the clapping, the singing and they enjoyed the worship together with the teenagers. Isn’t God truly amazing? I am so looking forward to all the moments where God will ‘do His thing’ and I just have to be focused on Him and enjoy what He will do in the service.

Don’t try or work so hard, let Him lead the way. He will and shall do it…