Lead Worship

“Bitterness, for instance, is like a cancer that makes you blind. I had allowed hurt to make my soul toxic, From my end, I was sure that I was just becoming a realist. In fact, I was desensitizing myself. Why risk being hurt more? I didn’t realize I was becoming blind to love. I couldn’t see the people around me who really cared. Their sincere efforts went unnoticed. If you had asked me then, I would have said they weren’t there. I look back now and realize I just couldn’t see them, but they were right in front of me the entire time. Bitterness turned to skepticism, which turned to cynicism, which turned to an emptiness of my soul.

“Bitterness is the enemy of love because it makes you unforgiving and unwilling to give love unconditionally.

“It is the enemy of hope because you keep living in the past and become incapable of seeing a better future.

“It is the enemy of faith because you stop trusting in anyone but yourself. I bring this up because I think many of us become blinded by a bitterness of the soul. If we are not careful, we will lose the ability to see such things as beauty, truth, or even affection. More importantly, you may close your eyes to what your soul needs you most to see.”

-Soul Cravings, Erwin Raphael McManus

Is this what my church work has become? This weekend has been a free-for-all love fest on self in the worship department at Faith. Members getting jealous of one-another. Others blew attitudes. One member looked me straight in my face and told me that I was successfully making them look stupid.

What hurt was not the comment. What hurt was the fact that the comment didn’t hurt. This was stated right in front of an intern. He asks “If this is what ministry is like, I don’t want to be a part of it.”

I lied to him. I told him that it was not. Well… it shouldn’t be.