#fireplace: pressing on in #worship (and two #giveaway s)

The weekends when I lead worship at church are often both stressful and satisfying. (Okay, it's only stressful for me and the musicians because I'm a muddle-minded person).
Today, for example, our drummer didn't turn up. We pressed on, with keys and guitar. Then our LCD projector blew a fuse in the middle of Lead me to the cross. And you know, that's a difficult song; it has so many words. We pressed on - even the littlest child can sing the chorus of In moments like these. Then the pastor's microphone didn't work. He swapped mikes and pressed on.
It felt like a recipe for disaster, but it wasn't.

And somewhere in the back of my mind was the question, 'why does this always happen to me?'
But that's an unfair question, because it doesn't always happen to me. And even when it does, you know that it only makes you rely on God all the more.

Sometimes I think that's why it happens to me. Because sometimes I think I can handle it when I know I can't. And though mostly I hope for a great worship session, I'm usually thankful that we got through the set with minimal disasters. After every worship session, I thank God for getting us through, and promise I'll be better prepared the next time, I'll dig deeper in His Word, but life gets in the way, and sometimes I do, but more often I don't. That's probably not a very good confession to be hearing from your worship leader, but sometimes it really is the truth! (And if you can't be truthful to your church, who can you be truthful with?)

I just bookmarked this verse during service this morning:

Luke 22:32 - But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.

It kind of struck me... did you ever realise that Jesus said "And when you have turned back"? It presupposes we will fall but we will get up again. Okay, yes we know that Peter denied Jesus and later he turned back and led the church; we know that in hindsight. Imagine, for a moment, if you were Peter, and you knew with all your heart you would never fail Jesus... and then you did. That one word, "when" would have made a lot of difference for me.

So we press on, continually press on. 

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CHRISTMAS GIVEAWAYS!

I've blogged about my good friend Josh before - last year, I did an artist interview with him when he first launched his album, In That Day.

This year, I'm running a giveaway for his album (digital download), unless you live in Malaysia, in which case I can arrange an autographed copy for you. It's an easy entry giveaway! 

Also, I've been much blessed by the Next Level worship series by David Santistevan, and was also privileged to participate in the launch of his book, The Worship Songwriter, in October. So here's another easy entry giveaway!

Entries close on 23 December 2012!

(p/s I've moved the rafflecopter to a separate post here.)