I love a good party — especially hosting a good party.

Over this past Thanksgiving holiday, I hosted a few friends at my piano studio for my first-ever Friendsgiving dinner and it was an ab.so.lute.blast! Hilariously enough, the highlight of the menu ended up being this perfect, smoky gouda cheese served with apples and salted rosemary crackers — and we still talk about that gouda!

Yet while I love hosting a great dinner party, there’s also something really special about being on the receiving end of the invitation. On the other hand, there has to be some kind of a relationship or desire for a relationship between the host and the guest for a dinner invitation to be extended.

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Do you ever feel the need to be chosen?

Not necessarily for what you do, what you can do, what your job description is, what your social media following looks like, what your pedigree is, or what your experience is — but simply for who you are.
We want to be known for who we are, we desire to be chosen for who we are. But what we must understand, remember, and live for is the fact that we are known by the one who holds all power in heaven and earth; we are chosen by the one who is higher than all other things, principalities, powers, and humans.

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I used to think that there would be this magical point of arrival in life where I would be satisfied with who I was and what I had accomplished — the point of geographical arrival, the point of best-musician-award arrival, the moment of entrepreneurial arrival, et cetera et cetera et cetera.

I’ve discovered that through all of my planning and preparing for the next right thing, the next big thing, the next thing on my to-do list, the next ”I-want-to-arrive-here-moment” — that is when the real moments of life happen. Life doesn’t stop because I’m planning for certain moments. Life IS what happens as plans are made for the big, shiny, sparkly, glam, perfectly Instagramable moments.

And I think that worship is really similar to that concept.

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As worship leaders and church musicians, it’s often easy to get distracted by the list of duties we have on a weekly basis in order to make our services run smoothly. We have our personal practice time before group rehearsals, plus the added time of those rehearsals, the actual services themselves — plus, of course, the aspects of the real world and our very real-life schedule with all of its demands.

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I wish I could tell you that you have so much potential. I wish I could tell you that you have so many opportunities to live, love, experience, pursue. I wish I could encourage you to let go of the complacency you have allowed yourself to settle for. I wish I could tell you that you have everything it takes and more to be a success.

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As worship leaders — that is, leaders of living a life of worship — it's important to keep the focus of worship in its rightful place. As humans, we live in a state between being and doing: being who we're supposed to be while doing the things we're supposed to do. However, "God calls us to be in a relationship WITH him before we attempt to do anything FOR him."

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