Worship Wednesdays: Are You Ready?

So after a brief hiatus and a week of being laid up with a bad chest cold, we are back.

This past Sunday our pastor presented his theme for the new year, "READY."
He defined Ready as follows:

Ready 1. Standing in the place of anticipation 2. Having a made up mind 3. Poised for action.

Being a worship leader I of course began to think about this in the context of my ministry, and I began to ask myself, "am I ready?"

First, am I standing in a place of anticipation? Do I approach Sunday mornings with an attitude of an obligation that I need to fulfill or do I come expecting, anticipating great things every Sunday? There is a great song by Matthew West called The Motions, that sums this feeling up.

I don't wanna go through the motions
I don't wanna go one more day
without Your all consuming passion inside of me.

the second definition really made me think about the songs we sing. Do they convey what we believe? Do they present a clear and honest picture of the God we serve? As a worship leader, I take my job extremely seriously. I spend hours in prayer when selecting songs for our worship services, but I still scrutinize every song we do. Also when I sing a try to think about the words and their meaning, allowing the emotions those words stir inside me to be evident on my countenance.

The last thing is being poised for action. Am I ready to respond to when the Spirit moves? Do I allow room for Him to move? Is my set list more important than what God is doing in the service? I like to believe that if God begins to move in our service that I would be sensitive enough to His Spirit that I could change my set list on the fly.

So, this year I'm going to challenge myself to be READY, and I want to extend that challenge to my fellow worship leaders. Are you willing to be READY?