Celebrate Your Uniqueness
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- by Kelly Carpenter
From: http://www.kellycarpenter.com
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"I was struggling trying to figure out how to begin this article, so I decided to head for the health club and do some lap swimming. Now there are some who do lap swimming, and then there are others that do LAP SWIMMING. I admit that I simply do lap swimming. I typically go in the early afternoon and really enjoy the fact that I usually have the pool to myself. Lap swimming is my primary means of exercise, and I have a certain way and pace that I do it as far as the number of laps, type of stroke, and how fast I go. When it's just me at the pool, I even enjoy singing praise songs to the Lord out loud during my rest periods.
Well today I went to the pool and it was packed! Now I
don't know about you, but there is something of a competitive spirit that's
in me. If I'm at the pool by myself, I can enjoy myself in complete freedom.
But when there are a lot of people there and every lane is full, I am conscious
of how well I am swimming compared to swimmers in the other lanes. I start
to compare myself to others-I don't swim as well as that person-or I am smoking
that other person. All of a sudden, I realize that I am not enjoying my swim
in complete freedom-I am too concerned about how I look, whether I'm doing
it good enough, if I'll ever be able to swim a mile and live to tell about
it.
I was reflecting on these things when it struck me that this would be a good
illustration to start this article. Here we are just on the cusp of 1999.
I usually get reflective toward the end of the year, assessing how I've done
with certain areas of my life that I still struggle with; wrestling and praying
about how to do better next year. One area that has been a continual struggle
with me is the area of comparing myself to others. Let me give you another
illustration that you can be the participant in.
Imagine that you are leading worship or playing/singing on a worship team at your church. You are giving it all to God in complete freedom and abandonment. Now let's suppose that you notice that some famous worship leader or Christian music artist walks into your worship service. What do you think your reaction will be? Now be honest. Perhaps this has happened to you, or perhaps someone who may not be so famous but is still highly regarded by you walks in. Are you able to completely ignore the fact that this "somebody" has walked into your service and you are still totally free to continue leading worship, or do you start to sweat a little, and wonder what this person thinks about your worship leading/playing/singing?
I look back on the last year and I have been extremely
blessed to have written a song that has done very well in both the worship
community and the contemporary Christian music industry. Yet, I listen to
the worship songs that some of my contemporaries write and sing on and I catch
myself thinking, "Gee, I wish I could write a song like that", or
"I wish I could sing like that". And I realize that I have allowed
myself to get ripped off of enjoying the blessing that the Lord has given
me because I am comparing it to what He's done through others. Oh Lord, have
mercy on me!
When I do keyboard workshops at conferences, I usually include a section entitled
"Building Confidence and Authority as the Worshiping Artist" and
in this section I talk about the importance of "acknowledging the unique
person God has made you to be". This subject is so near and dear to my
heart that I use any excuse to sneak it into a workshop I'm doing. I want
to pass some of this on to you because I believe that recognizing the truth
of who you are in Christ can set you free!
The truth is, God has created each one of us as unique persons. You may be thinking, "well that's kind of obvious isn't it?". Yet, how many of us really live according to this truth? It was quite a shocker to me many years back when it dawned on me that the Lord was calling me to be the best Kelly Carpenter that I could be and that nobody could be a better Kelly Carpenter than me, and that the Lord didn't call me to be anybody else. (Now, I realize that there are other people out there with the same name, but I think you get the drift.) It's like the old Army jingle, "Be all that you can be". Well, the Lord is calling all of us to be all that we can be, and not be somebody else.
The Lord has endowed each one of us with a unique personality, disposition, physical characteristics, abilities, and talents. Our responsibility is to take all that the Lord has given us and use it all to the fullest, giving all to His glory. When we do that we are truly being all that we can be. God uses a different measuring stick than we do. In Psalms 139:14, David sings "I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well." In case you are thinking that this applied only to David, he is using literary parallelism here; the second sentence is a restatement of the first, and it means that God doesn't create duds! Yet we wind up measuring ourselves against others and come to the conclusion that we're either not as good, pretty, successful, talented, or whatever as others-or we go the other direction and think we're better than others. The former results in low self-esteem and insecurity, the latter in pride and arrogance. What we need to realize is that this is the world's measuring system and not God's.
Now let me pause here for a second and ask you this: Do you believe that you are fearfully and wonderfully made? And that wonderful are God's works? And you're one of them? And God doesn't make duds? If you are not convinced of this, then I recommend that you do some study about who you are in Christ. An excellent roadmap for this is a book by Neil Anderson titled "Victory Over the Darkness". He shows all of the many scriptures that speak of who we are in Christ. It is amazing when we really take in and start living the truth of who we are in Christ. I consider myself still a novice in this matter.
Okay, now I will bring all of this around to worship. Here we are giving our offerings to God out of what He has already given us-"Freely you have received; freely you give". We are called to give our all to Him. If we succumb to the trap of comparing our gifts to others and conclude that ours are either inferior or superior to others, than we dishonor the One who gives us the gifts in the first place. We are called to live with our eyes fixed on Jesus, not on others. Competition has no place in the body of Christ. One of my favorite passages is the first part of Hebrews 12, here rendered in The Message: "Do you see what this means-all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we'd better get on with it. Strip down, start running-and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed-that exhilarating finish in and with God…". The writer talks about finishing the race, not about winning the race. Winning implies competition whereas finishing implies perseverance and singleness of purpose. The good news is, everyone who finishes winds up a winner.
Now to practical application. Each one of us is given a lesser or greater degree of certain gifts and talents. I have prayed that the Lord would allow me to actually see things in the Spirit when I lead worship. I can hear things and get impressions, but He has yet to give me the gift of seeing. He has given that gift to others. If I covet their gift, I take my eyes of Jesus. Not everyone can be all parts of the body. Not everybody has been given Matthew Ward's voice, who apparently has never had any vocal training and has been able to sing that way out of the chute. If I measure my meager vocal abilities against Matthew Ward, I'll think that somehow my talents aren't good enough. Again, I have taken my eyes off Jesus. If I'm sitting somewhere worshiping with my instrument and in walks someone that I know has less skill or natural talent, and if I start to strut my stuff just to show how much more talented I am, then I have taken my eyes off Jesus. I have also judged in my heart that the other person's offering isn't as good as mine, therefore the other person is a dud, and ultimately dishonoring God.
Our system of measuring people's musical talents against others is a worldly system. The music industry, both secular and sacred, is rife with competition. Everyone who has "made it" has done so by stepping on the backs of countless others. The folly of pride lurks around the corner of anyone who dabbles in music.
This is not to say that there is no place for skill in worship. The psalmist exhorts us to "play skillfully". Skill is extremely important. Vocals that have nice tone and are in tune, players who can play the right things at the right time-these are all important. The worship leader/music minister has to make a judgment call on whether a person has sufficient skill to contribute to the worship service in a way that supports and enhances it rather than detracts from it. If the leader determines that someone doesn't have sufficient skill to be on the Sunday Morning Prime Time Worship Team, then that doesn't mean that that person's offering is not good enough in the eyes of the Lord. Whatever the outcome, we each have a responsibility to develop those skills necessary to do the best that we are capable of, according to the gifts and talents the Lord has given us, for whatever task we are called to serve in. We are not to use our gifts and talents in a competitive way.
If these thoughts are ringing any bells for you, let me
suggest some things to do as you start this new year:
+ Confess and repent of any competitive spirit that is in you
+ Confess and repent of any jealousy or envy you have towards another
+ Confess and repent of any pride or conceit which you display towards another
+ If you feel injured that the leader has passed you over in favor of someone
else, or if someone has made you feel second-rate, forgive them so that bitterness
does not take root
+ If at a worship event you wish you were one of those up on the platform,
this is envy; it's time to confess and repent
+ If while listening to worship music or you daydream about being one of those
"big guns"; again this is envy, it's time to confess and repent
+ If you feel that you are somehow inferior or second-rate, then it's time
to study about who you are in Christ and repent of anyway that you have despised
how the Lord has made you
+ Practice thankfulness about the unique person the Lord has made you to be
The moment you encounter any thoughts of jealousy, envy, and pride welling up within you, "bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor 10:5b)". Nip them in the bud. Do not allow them to blossom into arrogance, insecurity, and bitterness.
One final thought. I was reading Henri Nouwen's book, "Here and Now", and he made an intriguing connection between judging others and the fear of man. He took Jesus' teaching from the Sermon on the Mount, "Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.", and made the observation that when we judge others we wind up living in the fear of man; that the fear of man is one way in which we experience that judgment in the here and now. It is my prayer that we no longer stumble around in the fear of man, but learn to walk-even run-in the freedom of who we Copyright © 1998 Kelly Carpenter's Worship Resource
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Great Commission Worship & Arts Center