Today's post is by guest writer Keith Ward.
I once was a reasonably capable song-leader. I also was preaching part time at this medium size church back when Dene and I were engaged and in our honeymoon year. We were there early on a Sunday night and I was practicing a song when H.R. came in, bustling down the aisle the way he did when he was younger, “Do you like that song?” I replied that I did. “Well, then, why are you singing it that way?” He then proceeded to show me what I was doing incorrectly and how to do it right. Now, many would fault him for being too brusque—he should have been nicer with his manner, etc. But, I was grateful because I did like the song and did not want to sing it wrong.
How are you doing with your song which you are composing for Jesus? Each day you sing a new score, sometimes a solo, sometimes a concert or a duet, but each life makes music unto the Lord.
How would you feel if I came bursting in and said, “Do you like that song?” … “Then, why are you singing it that way?” Do you want to go around feeling good all the time, puffed up with positive comments and people’s suggestions so nicely thought out that you don’t know that your life is discordant to the music Jesus wrote? Do you want your song to Jesus to be off key and feel good, or risk a hurt feeling to be able to sing the right notes? A choral director looks right at the offender and says that he is flat, or sharp, or held that note too long, or whatever. We have become so afraid of offending people that we let them keep on singing the wrong notes and creating disharmony in our song to Jesus too!
Our sermons are positive, make people feel good and would never offend a sinner if he had done what is being preached about last night and planned to do it again tonight. In like manner are our personal attempts to tell someone that he needs to change.
A lot of people who could sing a beautiful melody to Jesus are rushing straight to eternal damnation for the lack of an H.R. to say, “Here is the way that song is supposed to be sung.”
Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth? Gal 4:16
Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy. Prov 27:6
Keith Ward
I once was a reasonably capable song-leader. I also was preaching part time at this medium size church back when Dene and I were engaged and in our honeymoon year. We were there early on a Sunday night and I was practicing a song when H.R. came in, bustling down the aisle the way he did when he was younger, “Do you like that song?” I replied that I did. “Well, then, why are you singing it that way?” He then proceeded to show me what I was doing incorrectly and how to do it right. Now, many would fault him for being too brusque—he should have been nicer with his manner, etc. But, I was grateful because I did like the song and did not want to sing it wrong.
How are you doing with your song which you are composing for Jesus? Each day you sing a new score, sometimes a solo, sometimes a concert or a duet, but each life makes music unto the Lord.
How would you feel if I came bursting in and said, “Do you like that song?” … “Then, why are you singing it that way?” Do you want to go around feeling good all the time, puffed up with positive comments and people’s suggestions so nicely thought out that you don’t know that your life is discordant to the music Jesus wrote? Do you want your song to Jesus to be off key and feel good, or risk a hurt feeling to be able to sing the right notes? A choral director looks right at the offender and says that he is flat, or sharp, or held that note too long, or whatever. We have become so afraid of offending people that we let them keep on singing the wrong notes and creating disharmony in our song to Jesus too!
Our sermons are positive, make people feel good and would never offend a sinner if he had done what is being preached about last night and planned to do it again tonight. In like manner are our personal attempts to tell someone that he needs to change.
A lot of people who could sing a beautiful melody to Jesus are rushing straight to eternal damnation for the lack of an H.R. to say, “Here is the way that song is supposed to be sung.”
Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth? Gal 4:16
Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy. Prov 27:6
Keith Ward
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