Week 4-5

It's been a while for the blog post! I'd like to give a short review of weeks 4-5.
Week 4-Hearing God's Voice
"We must learn to look below the surface of what we can see and hear with our physical senses. We must discern what God is up to." This requires us to be saved, sensitive and surrendered. Perhaps you are saved but sensitive? Surrendered? Jesus said, you who have ears, let him hear. Jesus knew everyone he spoke to had physical ears, but he knew not everyone was listening.

Are you?

Why listen to God? Let's answer that by developing our crisis mind-set.

• Desperation for God. This desperation will come when we see our true state of urgent need of Him.
• Determined to hear from God. Do we want to hear from God or do we HAVE to?
• Decided that God would speak. God's move and power isn't just a hope or a wish, it's a waited upon response to our plea. It's not presumption, it's faith. It's not a matter of if; it's only a matter of when.

The Characteristics of God's Voice-is it Familiar? Personal? Simple and Clear? Loving?

God's Words:

• are consistent with the Bible
• may conflict with human wisdom
• may clash with our fleshly nature
• will challenge our faith
• will require courage

Fine-Tuning our ears:

• Practice Listening
• Focus our thoughts
• Respond to every impulse from the Holy Spirit

In week 4, we have spiraled up. We have developed a closer relationship with the Holy Spirit. We have learned that we're His sheep that can hear His voice. We learned that as worship leaders we MUST hear from God. And we learned to fine-tune our spiritual hearing ears to more easily hear from the Lord.
WHY? Because our goal every day is to connect with Almighty God.

Week 5-Essentials of Effective Worship Services

• Prayer-"every work of God can be traced to some kneeling form." -Dwight L. Moody
  What if the entrance exam to the Choir loft each week was, "are you hearing from Heaven"? Prayer puts our focus where it belongs. "God can only bless people who are in tune...with Him and with one another. That is why we begin every choir practice with a season of prayer...The choir's ability to minister can never be better than their spiritual tone." -Carol Cymbala (Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir)
  Prayer sensitizes us to God's voice. Prayer gets results.
• Planned Spontaneity-We plan out distractions and plan in both flow and freedom to obey whatever God tells us to do. Are we ready for our planned song or music set to be interrupted for God to do something else? Maybe as a Choir member your reply is, "sure!" But are you ready for Him to do the same in your day today?
• Pliableness-Our willingness to be flexible. This comes down to trust. Trusting God even when we don't understand Him. Whether in a spontaneous worship moment in Church or in your week. Either God is Sovereign or He's not. To be pliable means to be bendable, workable and moldable.
• Power in the Spirit-Jim Cymbala, pastor of The Brooklyn Tabernacle in New York City, writes,“Our attempt at ministry will be an absolute exercise in futility if we are not
  expecting and experiencing divine help through the power of the Holy Spirit.
  It is not enough to teach and preach about the Spirit. We must experience him
  personally in new depths, or we will accomplish little. Without the Holy Spirit
  there is no quickening of the Scripture. Worship is hollow. Preaching is mechanical,
  never piercing the heart.” If in Luke 3:21-4:19 Jesus needed the power of my Spirit to be effective in ministry, how much more must you have the Holy Spirit anointing your life?
  Adrian Rogers writes, “In my estimation, the cause of Christ has been hurt far more by Christians who were carnal and not Spirit filled than by Christians who were drunk.
  To be filled with the Holy Spirit is really more about getting unfilled with ourselves.
  Here are the simple steps necessary to ensure we remain filled with him.
  (1) We must completely surrender every room and closet of our heart’s home.
  Well has it been said, “If he’s not Lord of all, he’s not Lord at all.” (2) Then we
  invite him to come and fill us up with only himself. (3) To continue being filled,
  we must daily claim his filling and continually surrender afresh to his voice and
  direction.
• Pastoral Direction-Before we can have the blessings of God on our music ministry—or any other ministry, for that matter—we must acknowledge and submit to the authorities
  God has placed above us. (See Hebrews 13:17.)
  Please read 1 Peter 5:5. Notice what our attitude should be.
  1 Peter 5:5-In the same way, you younger men must accept the authority of the elders. And all of you, serve each other in humility, for "God opposes the proud but favors the humble."

The most fruitful day for me was day 5 of week 4: Expecting to Hear, pg 71-73. The exercise with Psalm 23 was amazing. WOW-God's Word IS alive. Can I beg you all to do this before Sunday? please?
Love ya Choir! O, here's a video for you. After the Psalm 23 exercise, I was reminded of this song I sang in High School Choir. It's SO different than what we sing in church, but I still LOVE it. Even though it may not be your style, I'd ask you to just listen and meditate on the passage.