I have always loved music and wanted to learn to play instruments. My experience in the school band didn’t go well, flute was not for me, and I learned some basic piano skills from my sister when she took lessons. When I was 17 my parents got me the best gift ever, an acoustic guitar. Although they were worried at first when I just wailed on it for five hours straight with no skill (Thank the Lord they had grace with me!) I did manage to learn how to play and while I’m no musical genius I enjoy it and I can play a decent amount of songs.
I loved to play and my senior year of high school I started a worship team in the youth group. It was fun to play music with other people, but we were pretty basic and probably not the best, but we enjoyed it. The next few summers I really enjoyed the opportunity of working on the camp stuff and being part of the worship band for most of the camps. This was before directors brought in their own bands and such and when the staff was all musical in some form. We just made the band and I so loved playing with other people. It was fantastic to worship with my guitar and sing with everyone else singing out. After this I rarely played for people though. I would occasionally play special music for church on Sunday mornings and although I enjoyed it made me nervous beyond belief.
This year I have felt God pushing me to use this love and passion I have more. Back in Australia I volunteered to do a special for Sunday worship. It scared the heck out of me, and I know that I was shaky at first, but I enjoyed it in the end. For awhile I have felt the Lord telling me to use this love, but I have let it sit. It is hard to want to use this when I’m on a team with so many musical people most of whom are better than I am. Then, when I had no glasses my excuse was that I couldn’t read the music, but the Lord gave me a djembe. I learned the basics and played a few times randomly sitting around with people, but nothing formal. In Tanzania Chris told me that the Lord had told him to tell me that God loves my passion and he wants me to use my passion for him in whatever form that may be. I felt like that form may be music, but I was still uncertain about it. I mean why play when there are plenty of people who would do a better job than I would? I would mess up and ruin the worship. Besides, I’ve not played a ton and so I’m sort of rusty right now anyways. No, I’ll just leave it to those better than me.
Even though I pushed it away again God didn’t let it go. In the back of my mind I thought about it, but didn’t think the opportunity to use music would arise so figured it wouldn’t happen anyways. I was wrong and God probably laughed.
This month our contact has us doing street evangelism, not my favorite form of ministry, but we are honoring his wishes and doing it with all our hearts. However, he found out that half of us play music or sing and he loves music. He has asked us to bring our drums and guitars and to play on the street corners. This time however he wanted two teams of a guitar and a drum. I figured others would play, but in the first two weeks people have stayed back from ministry either from sickness or just needing time with God, or some have opted to talk to people instead of play. Therefore, the spaces that may have been taken at one point were now empty and I had the ability to fill them.
I knew that I needed to step up, whether I was confident in my abilities or not. It didn’t matter, because in my weakness God is strong. So in the last two weeks I have sat on park benches, and street corners all over the area pounding a drum or strumming a guitar to the best of my ability and hoping that it was doing something for the Kingdom. I even played djembe in two church services. Though, I may not be the best musician anyone has heard and there are those who are better than I am it has been awesome to worship with music again, to sit with another musicians and play and sing to the Lord. And at those moments when I think I’m ruining it, my teammates assure me I’m not and have encouraged me to keep playing.
I found my passion again and it has been awesome!
