Convicted

Tonight I sat down and worked on memorizing a piece of music. I spent around half an hour to forty-five minutes memorizing the piece. I would start from the beginning and play until I messed up; once I messed up I started over. Ever time I messed up I started from the beginning. Each time I played longer and longer until I came to a spot I realized I had to work on separately from the whole song. I stopped my "game", worked on that spot, and then started my game up again for awhile.

You see, this music is accompaniment to a song the Youth Choir at my church is learning. It is very important that I am able to play it perfectly, so that I don't mess up the choir, and so that I don't draw attention away from them drawing attention to God. I'm only there to support and add to their music. Accompaniment is not necessary to a song, but it is a pleasant addition. I definitely don't want to take away from the song. However, I haven't been doing very well, and I am struggling very much to make it perfect.

Often when I learn a song I learn it with the sheet music in front of me, and within about 3 weeks of steady practice I can play it at performance level, with the music. I went about learning my choir music the same way, but for some reason or other it just isn't cutting it. After 5 or so weeks of steady practice I was getting worse and tripping up on the easier parts of the song, even though I had pretty much mastered some of the places that seemed very hard in the beginning. I decided it was time to memorize the song, and now I have almost completely memorized every note of this 11 page song. I am going to play this song over and over and over again until not only can I play every note perfectly, but until it flows out of me, as if it were a part of me. I will play this song until it becomes a part of me.

As I was practicing tonight, it hit me. I was meditating on that song. I was mulling it over, going over every tiny detail, playing it over and over and over again. Why don't I ever do that with scripture? Why don't I ever go over a verse time and time again until it becomes a part of me?

I was very convicted.

God told me tonight, "Laura, how can I bless your music when you are playing a part? How can you serve me at church when you do not serve me at home? Just because you were serving me before doesn't mean you can ride on that. You must serve me continually."

I have been a very disobedient child, and I have served myself very much more than I even want to realize these past weeks. Lord, forgive me. You have given me the grace to be obedient and I have rejected it! And I have asked you to bless me, anyway. How selfish of me. And in my selfishness I have missed out on so much of his wonderfulness. How is is that serving myself is really robbing myself? My logic is SO messed up.

I'm so grateful that my Father is gracious, merciful God, slow to anger, and of great kindness. <3