Love God and Love the Body, and Only THEN Lead Worship
Matthew 22:37-40
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Love The Lord Your God
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Everything has to begin with that! There is a reason that Jesus calls this the “first and greatest commandment”. Before everything, there is God. There is no one above Him. But so often, we get that backwards. The world today tells us that our first love should be ourselves. It tells us that we cannot be effective loving others until we can first love ourselves. Nothing is further from the truth. As we begin to understand how much God loves us, our love for Him begins to grow and along with that, our capacity to love grows. It is only by Him first loving us and us first loving Him that we grow in our ability to love others and eventually ourselves.
Loving God Correctly
We are told in the passage above that we are to love God first. However, if we are not loving God correctly, we are not really loving God. And how do we love God correctly, according to the passage? We are to love God with “all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” The book of Luke even adds that we also need to love God with “all our strength”. This is a full-time love. This is a love that is going on continuously underneath all activities in our lives. It is something that will surface often because it is continually flowing just under the surface. This constant love and relationship with God is the thing that causes people to say things like, “There’s something different about you” or, “There’s something special about you.” There actually is something special about you. People are actually getting a glimpse of God’s love through you! They are not sure what’s going on, but it is good, and they like it. And it’s all happening because you loved God first and you loved Him correctly!
Love Others
It is only after loving God first and loving Him correctly that we are ready to begin loving others. When we exercise the muscles in our body, they get stronger. Just like the muscles in our body, when we make loving God our “first and greatest” activity, we are exercising our ability to love. As our ability to love grows stronger, we are able to love others more deeply and more completely. It is only by loving God first that we become better people-lovers! And as we can see from the passage above, becoming better people-lovers is so important to Jesus that He calls it the second greatest commandment – second only to loving God!
Lead Worship at Church
Once we make loving God our “first and greatest” priority and make loving others our “second greatest” priority, only then are we ready to begin leading worship. Only then will our heart be eager to serve God and to serve His church. We will look out over His church and feel an incredible love for His people. We’ll love them so much that we will want to give them something special. But what can we give them that measures up to this great love that we have for them? Then we realize that the best thing we have is that constant flow of our relationship and your love for God and HIS love for us! And since it is constantly flowing right under the surface, all we have to do is let it rise to the surface and over-flow us out onto them! Simply share His beautiful and perfect love with the ones we love and care so much about and perfect worship just happens! It’s not about the music. It’s not about the lights. It’s not about us and how well we lead worship. It about experiencing the love of God with the ones we love and care about the most.
Only then will your church truly be worshipping in “spirit and truth!” Only then will your worship be a perfect “sacrifice of praise!” Only then can you “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God, which is your reasonable service.” (Romans 12:1 NKJV) Amen!
