So, I had planned to blog earlier tonight, however my internet decided to go out. I was going crazy!!! I can’t believe how much I rely on being connected to everyone/everything through the internet. After I ate dinner, played mahjong and watched some lame sitcoms, I was still panicking from my internet withdrawal. I decided to work on tweaking my DUN NAI on my phone to get my tethering to work. And after 10 minutes of tweaking…. YES, I’m using my 3G EVDO Rev. A connection from my phone hooked to my computer to write this blog. Couple minutes later, after being out for three hours, my Comcast decides to come back…
Anywayz…
This past Steps, we were graced by the presence of Mr. Stuart Sakoda. Although I only knew him through association with my friends, I’ve always looked up to Stuart as a worship leader. Various times either at the JEMS concerts or simply at Socrates’ house, I was given the opportunity to see Stuart jam on the guitar and go all out LOUD for Christ. To this day, he remains as one of the few inspirations I have to lead worship. When I heard that he was going to Hillsong Australia, I was ecstatic! The Hillsong/United bands had always drawn my attention through the amount of outward passion through expression of their love and dedication to God. This has also been a great influence of my service to lead people to…
All Praize Jesus aka ELoHiM
Who rules everything, He’s every kings’ King
And He outshines every “Bling-Bling”
Back to the story; Stuart came to speak about devotion. I feel that the key thing that I took from his message was a little quote that he shared from another speaker at Hillsong saying… “we have a generation of public passion but lack of private devotion.”
For me this really hits home. I’ve been at SCAC for 13+ years and have seen the evolution of praise & worship. I have always felt that there was a large extreme with the amount of expression among different generations. For a time, it seemed that the youth, including myself, were very outwardly passionate yet lacked that deeply rooted relationship with God. Concurrently, the older generation seemed to be the complete opposite, seeming to have a strong relationship yet zero outward expression. As a worship leader, this is always a tough thing to think about; it leads to deep examination of how my spiritual life is. That’s a good word. It’s a great reminder of how transparent and honest we, Christians, should be to one another. Through mentors, I was always taught to never show your weak side when leading worship since it may hinder the experience for others to worship. Having been in God’s service for leading worship for 10 years, this was the spoon-fed teaching that I had always followed.
Let’s be real; this is not okay. It is because of that dishonesty that generations of leaders and their followers can fall into that trap of having public passion but lacking private devotion.
We must be HONEST with ourselves.
We must be REAL in our devotions with Jesus.
We must BREAK FREE from falling into the abyss of being complacent with our mediocre spiritual lives.
We must STRIVE to go…
… deeper.
- Vince Chu
