Why skill matters in worship

  Psalm33,3 says, sing to the Lord a new song.

Play skillfully on the strings with loud shouts.

Play skillfully is the part that I want you to think about.

Psalm 78, 72 says, with an upright heart, David shepherded Israel

and guided them with his skillful hand.

And then Exodus 35 says, Let every skillful man, I would say woman

too, among you, come and make all that the Lord has commanded.

The tabernacle, the tent, its covering, its hooks, its boards,

and all its tiny little details.

Basically, skillful people.

So these three verses tell us to be skillful in our craft and our calling.

So talent is given, but skill is acquired.

I want you to think about that.

Talent is given, but skill is acquired.

So God deposits talent in each one of us, but only those of us

who cultivate and develop that talent will become skillful or skilled.

And God desires and in fact commands.

In some of these verses we just read, he commands

that we be skillful in our craft. Why?

Because God is worthy of our work.

He’s worthy of our best, he’s worthy of our labour.

To bring back to him something beautiful and valuable and costly.

Worship requires sacrifice, and sacrifices cost us something.

You remember the woman who came with the alabaster jar before Jesus feet

and broke the jar and dumped out about $200,000 worth of perfume on Jesus feet?

Well, the disciples said, that is wasteful.

And Jesus said, that is beautiful. That’s what he said.

It’s a beautiful thing she has done for me.

So our sacrifice, our worship to God should cost us something?

David said, far be it for me to offer to God that which cost me nothing.

It’s kind of a complicated sentence, but what he’s saying is,

if it’s not valuable, if it doesn’t hurt in a sense, then it’s not worship.

Worship is costly.

It’s a sacrifice.

And so it’s not a sacrifice, but it doesn’t cost you.

And so God wants you and I to worship him with something that is valuable.

And I can’t think of anything more valuable than you developing

the talents that God has deposited inside of you to bring back to him that which he

gave to you and say, look, master, I made a return on what you deposited.

I brought you something better than what you gave originally.

So time spent in your room, sharpening your skills, working on

your craft, multiplying your talent is valuable because it’s costing you.

It’s costing you time, energy, effort, input, intentionality.

It’s costing you.

You’re actually going to sacrifice watching this show

so that you can develop the gift that God’s placed inside of you.

That’s costly, it’s valuable, and that is honouring to the Lord.

And so that’s why we should be skillful. Now, there’s.

There are many benefits to being skillful as well.

One of the best benefits of being skilled at what God has created you to do

is that you’re able to create whatever he inspires you to create.

You have the ability to take whatever he’s telling you to do

and to bring it out into reality.

And so when God told the craftsman of the tabernacle, I want you to make

ornate pillars engraved with pomegranates and all sorts of floofy things.

I don’t even know what was on them.

But all this intricate detail.

When God told them to do that, guess what?

They were able to.

They had put in the time, they had put in the reps, they had put in the work

to be skilled in their abilities so that they could do what God commanded.

And that is a huge thing for us to consider for ourselves.

Have I developed my gift enough to be able to.

To go wherever God commands me and do whatever God commands me to do?

The more skilled you are, the more you’re able to do for the Lord and

the more capable you are in your skill.

There’s a verse that says, do you see a man who’s gifted in his abilities?

He will stand before kings.

When you see someone skilled, they have more and more doors opening to them,

and that’s because they have the ability to serve more and more people well.

And if you think about our wonderful music director, Jeffrey Lewis, who’s just

playing keys, that guy could play any style of music that you throw at him.

Jeff can go wherever is needed with his skill musically on keys.

And guess what?

That means he can play at multiple styles of churches.

He can be invited to many large national conferences.

Because why? Because he can handle whatever is asked.

So being skilled gives you more opportunities to serve more people.

And make no mistake, being excellent in our craft is a way to serve people.

So I’ll use an analogy.

Imagine I invite you over to my house and I said, I’m going to cook you a meal.

Well, guess what? Alex is an awful cook.

Like, the worst cook.

Like, I can make eggs and sandwiches and that’s about it, right?

So imagine if you come to my house and I’m like, I served you this meal

and it’s lukewarm spaghetti that’s overcooked and soggy garlic bread.

You would not be Very delighted to eat that.

But on the other hand, if my incredibly skillful wife invited you over

and she made you a mouthwatering meal of lamb kebab and fresh veggies

and fluffy hot rice and delicious warm pita bread with butter on top.

Sounds good. Yeah.

You would have been served because she had the skill to better serve you,

to honour you with her skill.

And that’s why we want to develop our skill is it’s not to self serve,

to show people how great we are, it’s so that we can better serve other people.

So being skillful in your craft allows you to serve people.

And being skillful in your craft honours God.

God is the one who gave you the talents.

And so you should seek to return to the gift giver your very best.

Not half hearted effort, not minimal effort, but maximum wholehearted effort.

And we understand this from a human perspective.

Like if you were called to do sound for the King’s coronation,

or you were called to take photographs, or shoot a video of the King’s coronation,

or play a violin, or play a piano song for the presidential

inauguration, you would be sure that you’re in your room

every day practising, preparing, making sure that you’re bringing

your very, very best for that event. Why?

Because that high position deserves high honour.

But who’s higher than the King of the universe?

And if we practise and we would play and do all of our reps and everything

to prepare for the King’s coronation or the presidential inauguration, why would

we not be working equally as diligent or even more so for the King of Kings.

And it’s our duty to play skillfully for the one who made it all.

It’s a small way of bringing back to him and saying, thank you Lord,

like the song we just sang.

Thank you Lord, for making me, for giving me my life, for giving me my talents.

I want to honour you by bringing my best back to you.

And that takes time.

Being skilled takes time.

It takes daily time, weekly time, yearly time.

It takes decades to really get super skillful at something.

And we at this workshop, we want to help you become skilled in your talents.

Ephesians 4 says the job of church leaders is to equip

the saints to do the ministry.

So the workshops, this workshop and the ones in the future,

it’s our way of investing into you, to help you become skilled.

But actually it’s up to you outside of these workshops to put in

the time to develop the skill.

We cannot chew your food for you.

I don’t want to sound like I’m beating you up.

I’m just. I’m just simply saying a fact.

If you want to honour God with your craft, you have to put in

the time to develop that craft.

I can’t develop your craft for you, so we will give you the tools,

but you will need to put in the time.

And so my encouragement, my exhortation for each one of us in this

room is to set aside time each week to practise your craft to get more

skillful for the Lord, whether it’s photography, video editing,

art, singing, playing, even public speaking, making YouTube videos.

I met two YouTubers already.

It’s like, get better at that.

And that means you’re going to have to put aside things

that are worthless, fruitless, like, should I offend people, like social

media, like Netflix, like checking the news constantly, whatever it is.

But to sacrifice that and to put aside deliberate time to worship God

by practising your craft and by developing this talent he’s placed

in you so that you can be skilled.

And the last thing I want to say before I pass it over to Jeff

is that second verse we read says, david shepherded Israel with

a skillful hand and an upright heart.

So God does not want skill without your heart.

Okay? So he wants skill with heart.

Both matter to God and we should be working on both.

So that’s why we’re gathered today.

Besides eating burritos and fellowshiping, which it was beautiful to hear

your voices, we are here as leaders.

We’re here to invest in you and to also then encourage you to begin taking

seriously your craft, to develop your skill so you could better serve the Lord.

Amen.

That was a little lesson that I gave recently at a creative workshop

that we did for our church, and I thought you could use it as a devo

with your team by watching it with them and then discussing.

Hopefully, that will be fruitful.

I’ll also be making a video about how you can do a creative workshop at your church

to hit all the creative disciplines represented in your body.

So be sure to subscribe if you want to see how to do that.

I’ll be releasing that video in a couple months.

In the meantime, cheque out whatever YouTube is recommending next

and I will see you in the next video. God bless.