Endurance

In golf, physical endurance is key. If you are not physically in shape, playing golf will be pure torture. Of course, you can always get a cart and ride, but that is not true golf! You have to walk to get the full experience!

The Christian life brings many challenges. You have to be physically in shape to be  a strong ambassador for Christ. When time in the Word is forsaken, our physical endurance can quickly become diminished.

Management

Management on the golf course is important. If you have ever played or have been around golf, you will realize that there is a certain etiquette that is expected. This whole etiquette consists of many rules such as repairing divots, not stepping in someones line of putt, remaining quiet while someone is hitting, etc. Aside from these  “technical” rules of etiquette, there are also expectations for how you should present on the golf course.

The management on the golf course applies to the Christian life. God has given us the Bible as a guide. These are the “rules of etiquette” for the Christian life. As a Christian, everyone is watching you…especially your friends who are still searching to find God. In one moment, we can all blow our testimony. For this reason, it is important to have endurance and manage our lives in a way that Christ desires.

Mentality

Your mental game is probably one of the most important things in golf. If you have a poor mental game, it will show!

Likewise, your mental game must be strong as a Christian. I’m sure everyone can agree on the fact that your mind is one of the hardest things to control. The stronger your mental game, the closer you will grow to Christ.

The qualities of endurance, management, and mentality must be developed. They are not given. As a Christian, we must continually strive to perfect these areas in our lives. The stronger you are in these areas, the better ambassador for Christ you will become.

Do you play golf? Are these qualities that need attention in your life?

This CD is a live singalong version from his concert. Phil’s concerts are always excellent, so make sure you pick up this awesome worship album!

Thank you Phil for releasing this!

Also tweet about the CD when you get it, so others know about it!

I asked him to answer a few questions…so here it goes!

Icebreakers:

1. Describe yourself in 3 words.

- Musical Jesus Freak

2. What are your favorite hobbies?

- Playing any instrument I have/can find, learning more and more musically, listening to Christian music, failing to attempt not to waste time sometimes, writing lyrics, writing other things (like guest posts or messages from the Bible)…

3. What are your favorite bands/artists?

- Top 2: Leeland and Phil Wickham, you guys are the best! There are a whole lot of other Christian bands and artists I like too, but that’s a long list that would be hard to rank and name haha!

Thoughts On Worship

1. Why do you lead worship?

- Worship is very important to me, it is one of the most intimate times we get to spend with God, and to get up on stage and pray to God in music and song, while leading others in it, is a huge blessing!

2. How do you prepare yourself each week for worship?

- I do my best to make sure I’m in sync with God and His will carefully, in prayer and self-examination. The very last thing I want is to get up on stage when I’m not as close to or submissive to God as I should be.

3. How important of a role does prayer play in worship leading?

- Prayer is everything. Trying to worship without praying is impossible, because the very definition of praise worship is praying to God intimately in song or music. The more intimately I’m praying when I worship, the closer to God I am. The more I feel the true symphony of joy He gives, the more I realize who He really is.

4. What do you consider the hardest part of leading worship?

- When Satan tries to take my mind off of what it’s all about by anything from the notes in the song to a distraction in the audience. Also when the audience isn’t worshiping…it’s hard to stay encouraged and focused on God and His greatness. I definitely try to stay away from these distractions and do my best to stay focused on intimate prayer towards God.

Well, that was an interview with my friend Brandon Kittridge. Stay tuned next week for more interviews!

What questions do you have for Brandon?

Starting this Monday, I will be interviewing our bass guitarist. You do not want to miss it! Every Monday for the next few weeks, I will be interviewing some of the members of the worship band. Depending on where that goes, we might start video interviews, but this is just a trial run.

So what do you think of the new series? Any thoughts or ideas that I didn’t mention?

In a youth group setting, you have those who desire to worship God and those that could care less. It is hard to try to lead worship with an audience that consists of individuals on two entirely different wavelengths. For the past year, this has been my battle.

The band and I practice every Sunday night after church, and we meet sometimes three hours before the Wednesday night service starts. We pour a lot of time and effort into the ministry, and sometimes it feels like it is all for nothing. This is exactly what Satan wants us all to believe. The devil wants to wear us down and try to convince us that our time and efforts are worth nothing. It is a lie!

The fact is that not everyone will want to worship God. When I step up on stage every Wednesday night, I have to realize that a spiritual battle is raging. Satan wants to do everything in his power to destroy our worship for God. Every Wednesday night, I see and feel this battle raging. There are several things that I do to help defeat this battle (and I can only do it through Jesus):

Prepare a Worship Set With God in Mind

In order to defeat this battle, I have to prepare. Most importantly, I prepare spiritually. Personal prayer and worship time is extremely important.

Taking it to another level, preparing an awesome worship set is important. In a previous post, I mentioned some key components to selecting an awesome worship set. The main thing was prayer. God must direct everything in worship. We are simply servants. If a worship set is selected without time in prayer, it shows that God’s agenda is not important.

Pray With the Band Collectively

Prayer is powerful. I have noticed that when prayer is not a priority, then the worship set usually is a failure. This failure can only be measured eternally. Yes, the band might have nailed the transition perfectly, but if it was “musically awesome” only…it is a problem. There have been a few times when we have forgotten to pray before a practice. It turned out that the practice was disastrous!

I now pray with my band before and after practice. This allows time to prepare for sound check and to prepare for worship. The prayer and devotional time before the service has really helped us set our minds on the task that God has for us!

Trust and Follow God

Leading worship is hard sometimes. It sometimes feels like there are so many things to do…I have to sing, play electric guitar, stomp pedals, orchestrate the band (give signals when to speed up…slow down…etc), encourage others to worship, and actually worship myself. It is a lot, and it takes practice to master.

I have learned during the sets to pray constantly. That’s what worship is all about. God wants to hear from us…to worship Him! There is a difference between singing/playing worship and leading worship.

When you have prepared, the last thing to do is trust God. He will always make all things work together according to His will. The main thing is to be prayed up and prepared for each service. No matter if you are on stage or in the audience,  it is important to be prayed up and to be prepared for to worship God.

I have found that although many individuals are disengaged, if I am prepared, God is prepared. He has never let me down yet!

How do you prepare for worship?

“Pray without ceasing.”

-1 Thessalonians 5:17

A simple command, but so hard to fulfill. I have found that when I have an attidude of prayer throughout the day, the overall day is better. I feel more productive, grow closer to God, and develop better relationships with others.

Challenge for today: Have an attitude and mindset of prayer throughout today. You will be amazed at what god can do when you constantly talk to Him!

Everyone has 86,000 seconds in a day. In reality, you have less than this amount of time because a good portion of it is spent sleeping. Our time is valuable. How you use the time that you are given each day reflects your priorities. It is hard for me sometimes to get away from the things that steal my time. I’m sure it is the same for you.

In 1st Corinthians, it says:

“Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

-1 Corinthians 10:31

In all things, we should do it to the glory of God. I’m sure almost every one of us can say that we fall short of this standard everyday. That’s why we constantly need Jesus. We can not do it on our own! Our time is valuable, and it is given to us by God. What we do with the time we have been given is important.

The challenge for today: Keep track of your time. Make a conscious effort to allow time for the most important things in life…which includes serving others. God gives us time to be able to use it for His glory…

How will you use your 86,000 seconds?

Besides moving domains, platforms, and everything, the site experienced a lot of growth. The email subscribers are slowly coming back up to where they were on the old site. The good thing is that half of them are brand new! Traffic has also been steady with close to a 400% increase in visits!

Top Posts

Our Perfect Plan Is Not Always In God’s Agenda

Moving Forward When Your Website Grows Stagnant

A White Flag Surrender

Quantity vs Quality Time

If you have not checked out these posts yet, you can click on them. Discussion is always welcome on any of the posts!

Top Commenters

• 1st Place  Joe Lalonde- 13 comments

• 2nd Place Dan Black- 7 comments

• 3rd Place Jon Stolpe- 6 comments

Stay tuned for more posts this week. For the top commenter next month, I will be giving away something special. I am also going to do a few give-aways for the month of May. You don’t want to miss them!

By the way, you can now follow me on twitter! I will be updating special things about the giveaways there before they are posted on the site.

How was your month? Feel free to share links to your top posts!

You can follow me @b_gilliland! With twitter, I can now share more with the readers here. Plus, it will allow me to post more quality content here on the site.

Stay tuned for more posts!

I have:

• broken strings (this is bad because your whole guitar goes out of tune, and you can not play the same chords)
• fried cables
• dropped picks (this always happens when my picks are not easily accessible!)
• had a guitar break
• short-circuited pedals (bad…just bad…)
• had mics go out
• had tubes blow (this is always bad because the sound can not travel out of your amp)

Out of all of these things, I am glad to say that I have not fallen on stage…only at practice! The point of mentioning all of things things is that they can not be controlled. No matter how much one prepares or insures that the gear is quality, these things can still happen. Learning to deal with these situations properly is important.

In leading worship, the last thing I want to occur includes the list above. Every time I lead worship, I always recognize that everything is in God’s control. I have found that many times, God uses these events to shape us. When things do not go the “perfect” way, God can often use them for His glory.

I can recall a time when the band and I were leading worship. We had all agreed to practice extra early to insure that our set was going to be awesome. We were going to add all of these new components to the songs, and it was going to be great. We soon found that we were needed to help out with some church activity before church started. I initially thought about the practice. “What about worship band practice?!”

What I though was going to be half an hour, soon turned into a few hours. At this point, we literally had 10 minutes to run through a complete sound check. On top of that, half of our stage gear was missing. We had barely enough mics, the sound board was messed up, some songs were not ready with words to be placed on the screen. In our minds, it was a disaster. We all semi-completed our 10 minute sound check and quickly went outside to have a pre-service prayer meeting like usual. The only difference in this prayer time was that we were overwhelmed. We prayed for God to have His way in the situation.

Eventually, we stepped up to lead worship. On the very first song, my guitar string broke. At this point, I realized that I could not do anything in my own strength. I asked again that God would have His way in the worship set. As the worship set came to a close, I prayed, and it was time for the sermon. After the sermon ended, I packed up my gear as usual. One of the leaders came over to me, and told me that it was one of the best worship sets he had been a part of in awhile. I was honestly in shock! To us as a band, it was one of the most disastrous sets as far as the technical things.

That night a few weeks ago showed me that God can use the most unfavorable conditions to bring glory to Himself. He does not need to use us, but He does. God calls us to minister and serve Him in different ways. Even when things are not favorable, He can use it for His glory. Do not allow yourself to get in the way of God moving.

Has there ever been a time in your life when God used an unfavorable situation for His glory?