This is one of my favorite books about P&W, Music Ministry by Mike and Viv Herbert. One of my favorite topic is about a life of musician, which stress on 4S. What is 4S? I heard many people point to this topic before.
4S
Sanctification
Submission
Sensitivity
Skill
As we know in Old Testament, P&W is a ministry which is chosen and set apart. Those who involve or call to be in this ministry is from Levy tribe. Levy consists of Merari, Rohath and Gershon tribes. These people are called and choose to responsible for P&W. My point here is that P&W is God’s commandment. I will elaborate this topic more in next post.
Sanctification
Is to be sanctified, holy and pure in from of God as stated in 1 Co 12:27 Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. We often refer this sanctification to Romans 12:1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. A real spiritual worship is this that we offer a living sacrifice to God (not a dead one) and which have to be our body! Term and condition applied when we offer our body as a living sacrifice to God, which is have to be holy and acceptable to God.So to worship in Spirit is also an act that we need to focus on.The act is that we offer our living sacrifice.
What is a living sacrifice?
As we refer to Romans 12:1, living sacrifice have to be our body which is holy and acceptance to God.How to be holy? We can do it by admitting our sins, surrender to God and inviting God into our life so that we are acceptance to God! When we come before God, we have to check our self as stated in Matt 5:23-25, so if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. I believe when we come before the Lord in our condition that we are not settle, we are lying and being hypocrite in God’s presence! This result to “dead sacrifice”. A living sacrifice also refers to our body which is still alive and can be used by God for His Kingdom!
Submission
Refer to surrendering our self both to God and authority above us. Romans 13:1-3 let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Surrendering our self to God has to be the first priority in our life, because when we surrender our life to God, which mean we inviting Him to live in us and thus cleanse us and thus we fulfill the first S, which is Sanctification!
Sensitivity
Referring to Spirit-filled in our life and sensitive to His movement, and as I mention earlier in my previous post worshipper will worship in Spirit. When we worship in Spirit and be filled by His Spirit, we will know God’s movement, be sensitive and allowing Him to move in our ministry. Problem usually occurs when people tend not to be sensitive to God’s presence. This could happen when one to much focusing to his playing or skill, play with emotion without knowing that in the end they actually distract other worshippers! That’s why I suggest in my earlier post, musicians have to learn to worship during their playing; together with their instruments. When we do this, we will know during our playing if it is loud and noisy, or distracting other people. When we worship together we will definitely sensitive to God’s presence and we will not play base on our emotion but to focus on God’s presence during the ministry.
If we refer back to 1Sa 16:13, then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David from that day forward. And Samuel rose up and went to Ramah. This is what happen when David play his lyre with filled by Spirit, that the evil spirit depart from Saul!! Amazing!!
Skill
1Sa 16:16Let our lord now command your servants who are before you to seek out a man who is skillful in playing the lyre, and when the harmful spirit from God is upon you, he will play it, and you will be well. Saul looking for a talented and skillful musician; beside talented also remember that a person have to be Spirit-filled too. Skillful musicians or dancers needed cause when one is not really as skill as we require, this also can lead to distract worshipers focus during worship.
When I travel and went to different churches, most of the church have this problem. Skill!! Sometime I feel it is so distracting when you listen to someone play a drum with a wrong beat or late rolling. Even a distracting when you hear someone strum a guitar and suddenly to a wrong chord. You have to open your eyes to see what happen. My point here is not that I’m too much focusing to perfection but for me if we really want to serve God and glorify Him with our talent, always try to educate our self with skills and always want to improve our playing!! Give our best to God, whole heartedly and skillfully. Cause God always want us to be the best, for He is the provider. He created the music!! So don’t ashamed to ask!!I know God is looking to our heart when we play, and we often though that as long as my heart is honest in my playing, God will honor me back. But What if our heart is half-half, and we thought that, “enough. I think this is enough for God. As long as I offer Him my skill and He knows my desire, it’s enough”. Isn’t it this refer too we are not wholeheartedly. We just simply give not the best we could to our King? Always give the best we could!!
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