Let's go and look at two short scriptures, 2nd Corinthians chapter 6, reading 1st verse 4, 2 Corinthians 6 verse 4 says, but in all things approving yourselves as the ministers of God. And then in verse 7, with the word of truth, with the dynamic power of God. A lot of other stuff in those verses, I just skipped out the parts that I believe are applicable to what I'm going to share today.
The title of my message is ministering with music, ministering with music. What does it mean if God has called you to a music ministry? Does it mean you're called to be part of the church worship group? Does it mean you're called to be the worship leader? What exactly does this ministry look like? A music ministry. Now those who claim that they're called to a music or a singing ministry, usually they're quite skilled at playing music or at singing.
Very often they use these gifts to draw attention to themselves. And sometimes they just like being in the limelight. Now a lot has changed in the church today.
When I grew up in small little churches, we always had our little church band. I was blessed to be playing in church from a quite a very young age because I was keen to learn music. And so I learned to play instruments like the accordion and the guitar, later the piano and the organ.
But I remember there was always a squabble over who was going to play what. Because there were those who wanted to be up there playing. They weren't necessarily the best musicians.
They certainly were not very often anointed, but they wanted to be there. I remember in one particular church I was in, there were two different people who could play the piano. The one I believe had a real good spirit and good ability, but there was another who really wanted to play.
And so to make it more easy for them to accept her to play, her parents bought the church a new piano. Well, they could hardly say, we're not going to let your daughter play in church, could they? Because the piano was given by them. So often what people call a music ministry is nothing more than a show of people wanting to be up there and displaying their skills or lack thereof to the world and getting attention to themselves.
No, no, no, no. This is not what we're talking about when we're speaking about a music ministry. Now, God does not need a natural skill before he can use you in ministry.
Only to get that straight from the beginning. Your natural gifts, in fact, can sometimes stand in the way of the call of God in your life. Sometimes you may have to die to them or let go of these natural skills before the Lord can even use you or fulfill his calling on your life.
So what part should music and singing play then in the call of God? What part should it play in your ministry? This is what I want to look at today and I hope by the time I'm finished you'll have a better understanding of how it should operate and where you fit into the picture. Now, I want to look first at natural gifts and the role that they play. I went online and looked up ministry of music and one of the first people I heard was a guy standing up there saying, well, you know, you don't have to necessarily have the call of God, you know, you just do what you do and use your music.
And then he made a statement, he said, obviously God's not going to call you to that kind of ministry if you can't sing or play. And I thought, wrong, wrong, wrong. All he was boasting in was his natural skills.
So my brother, you play well, we want you in the music ministry. My sister, you've got a lovely singing voice. You are obviously called by God to be involved in the music ministry.
Unfortunately, that's what's happening in the so-called worship groups, the worship leaders in the church of today, sad to say. But what role do natural gifts play? Where do natural gifts come from? Well, they come from three different sources because of the fact that we are made up of three different parts to our beings. There are natural gifts that come, physical gifts that come from the body.
Haven't you noticed that only the beautiful people are picked to be up there and to show their natural talents? Now, sometimes ugly people do better, but you know, they've got to have such an outstanding voice and such an outstanding natural skill before we'll even consider putting them up there. And they will probably put them in the background of the microphone so we can hear them and not see them. I was reading recently of a singer, not a Christian, who rose up in popularity, had a wonderful voice, but when he started out, his hair was receding and he was nearly bald.
And they said, he's not even good looking. How can we use a guy like this to get up there and to entertain people and to attract fans and followers? So, he bought himself a toupee and until the day he died, he wore a wig. Those people who loved this guy never knew that he wore a wig.
But you see, he had to put up appearances before he could be in that place of being acceptable. And unfortunately, we bring this into the body of Christ as well. We pick the beautiful people first.
And even if we pick the ugly ones, it's usually only the beautiful ones that succeed. They're the only ones that everybody looks to as a model. I want to be like that person.
I want to look beautiful and sound beautiful. It's got nothing to do with ministry at all, does it? We have natural gifts that come psychologically. They come from the soul.
You notice that it takes intelligence to rise up and be recognized by people. It takes a good personality to win everybody over. If your soul sucks, your chances are zero.
I don't care how nice you sing or how good you play. You'll always be relegated to the background, to a helper or an assistant or a second something. You'll never be up there as the front.
And then the third place that natural gifts come from is our spirit. Ah, now these ones are okay, right? Because they're spiritual. Do you know that unbelievers also have a spirit? It's a spirit that's dead towards God.
The spirit is the source of all artistic gifts. And the world abounds with unbelievers, with amazing artistic gifts that come from their human spirit. And those who are lucky enough to be born with it are promoted and lifted up and succeed.
Well, you're just lucky. You were born with a good singing voice. You're born with a natural skill to play music.
You are destined to rise up. And if you become a Christian along the way, well, then we just tag that on and make it a calling so that you can do this now for the Lord. Now, the truth of the fact is any human being can have these.
Your nationality doesn't matter. Your racial group doesn't matter. Your gender is irrelevant. Although I suppose you can have sex appeal if you're a woman, which might help. Your social status doesn't give you a greater capability of having gifts.
It will give you better opportunities, but it's not going to produce those natural gifts in you. You can do all of these without God in your life. You can be a total atheist.
You can be totally rejecting of God and have nothing to do with Him. And yet still rise up with these natural gifts. And you can succeed and rise up in the public eye and even become famous.
And the world is full of people like this. Now, here's the bad news. These gifts are seldom part.
Seldom, isn't it? Seldom part of your ministry calling. Your musical ability does not produce a call from God. In fact, sometimes it can stand in the way of your ministry.
Why is that? Because ministry is always done best using gifts that come from God. Well, you can say, well, yes, God created me. So indirectly, I did get this from God.
See, that's why we need to move now away from natural gifts and we need to start looking at super natural gifts. See, the gifts that God gives specifically to individuals are not natural gifts. Natural gifts are able to be developed.
Some people get them easily, but anybody can develop natural gifts by developing their body or their soul or their spirit. But if you want to be used by God, you need to receive from His hand, not from birth, not from heritage, not from circumstances and plain old good luck. You're going to receive specifically from Him and His gifts are always supernatural.
You can only get them by becoming a believer. They're not available to unbelievers and they can only function when they are combined with the power of the Holy Spirit. This is not available to any unbeliever and even a believer who had these gifts before getting saved.
God doesn't need those natural gifts. He doesn't anoint natural gifts with His Holy Spirit. He anoints spiritual gifts.
That's not to say God cannot use those talents. If they are yielded up to Him, He can help you to improve them by His power. But you must first come to the place where you are prepared to come with a clean slate.
All my natural gifts, all my abilities, Lord I give them up to do what you want me to do. Give me the gifts you want me to have for ministry. And you've got the right starting point.
To do that, you are going to need the anointing power of the Holy Spirit. God's Holy Spirit, when it comes upon you, affects all different parts of your being. It affects your human spirit.
It causes an inward flow to take place, which Jesus described as rivers of living water. It causes creative ability to rise up out of your spirit by revelation from God. And it stirs up all the true gifts that God gives to you.
The anointing of God affects the human soul too. It will open your understanding. It'll stir up feelings and desires.
And it will enable you to exercise greater willpower and be more bold. One of the first things that happened on the day of Pentecost was Peter the coward stood up with boldness. Power of God can affect your soul and produce boldness.
And then the power of God can also affect the human body. He can help you do things better. The Spirit produces sensations in your body.
It can be a feeling of warmth. It can be cold shivers. It can be tingling.
Many different manifestations. All of these effects take place when the anointing of God begins to work upon a person. So, two very important questions to ask.
Firstly, how do we get this anointing? Well, I was born with a great singing ability. That's not how you get the anointing. Well, I really worked hard and learned to play a musical instrument.
Sorry, that's not how you receive God's anointing. There's only one way you receive it. By an experience the Bible calls the baptism of the Holy Spirit, where the Holy Spirit comes upon you and empowers you.
If that has not happened to you, you do not have access to the anointing of God that is needed. And if you don't have that, don't even think about having a music ministry or any other ministry that involves natural talents and gifts that you have, because God doesn't need them. Oh, the church is full of them.
There are people who didn't even have natural gifts. They had supernatural gifts from Satan, psychics, and they become Christians. They continue with their psychic phenomena and are now called prophets.
Such nonsense. We need the true anointing of God. Now, that anointing can be contained in what we call a specific ministry mantle.
And God creates specialized mantles for ministry. Is it possible for you to have a mantle for music? Absolutely. Absolutely.
I believe God does give mantles of ministry in music and song. An anointing that is specifically tailored and geared towards using that ability to release the power of God. In fact, prophets very often have this mantle.
It's most common amongst the prophets. They seem to automatically move into this. As they move into their ministry, I think the mantle of music seems to be very prevalent.
At one time, I thought it was part and parcel of the prophetic call. But as we started to train prophets, we found very often prophets that had no music orientation at all. I didn't know such a thing existed, because until then, every prophet I'd met had some kind of music orientation.
So, I've had to rethink that and realize that there is a specific mantle. And I believe every prophet has the ability to receive that mantle if they will enter into it. If they don't, God's not going to force it on you.
So, that's how you receive the anointing. How do you release the anointing? Come on, if you've studied my stuff, there's only two ways to release the anointing. Through words and through actions.
Okay, let's look at the actions first. What actions can you take that release anointing? How about boldness? Stick your face out there and say, look at me. That's an action, isn't it? The moment you do that, you are releasing what is inside of you, because you are pushing it out.
When you get bold, you start kind of imposing it on people, don't you? You kind of start saying, I think you should do this and I think you should do that. You kind of become like a spiritual supervisor. You'd be amazed how the anointing can be released simply by boldness.
It can be released through artistic gifts. It can be released through playing of music. Playing a musical instrument is an action.
Well, just because you're playing music doesn't mean you're releasing an anointing. But you can release an anointing while playing music. We'll speak shortly about how that comes about.
Other arts as well. Writing, dancing, acting. It goes to all of them.
All of these are activities that have a spiritual base and can release the anointing of God. And then of course, the most powerful means his words. How do we release the anointing through words? Well, firstly, through speaking and probably to be more specific, through speaking the word of God or preaching.
We release the anointing. But you can also do it through singing. Singing requires the use of words.
And so the anointing can be released through music. And that only requires action. Well, how do we release the anointing through music? Well, firstly, the way you play is going to change the effect that you're going to have on people.
See, if I just stand here and strum very mediocrely and ordinarily, after a while it gets quite boring. See, but if I suddenly hit a chord hard and go, you get attention. I begin to slow it down and make it quieter.
Instead of strumming a whole chord, I pick all the notes of the chord. I'm playing music, but I'm varying the way I do it. Well, there's two things that allow you to communicate more through your music.
The first one is the skill that you use to play. And the second one is how loud it is. And that's absolutely scriptural.
And I will show that to you from the word. Psalm 33 verse 3, David says, sing to him a new song, play skillfully with a loud noise. When I first learned to play the bass guitar, I couldn't wait to play it in church.
Oh, I love the sound of boof, boof, boof. The old people in the church didn't like it. They went to the pastor and complained and said, can't you turn down that bass guitar? It's too loud.
The noise is irritating us. Maybe I didn't learn to release the anointing at those days, but at least I was playing loud. I find that while I'm playing and the anointing comes on me, sometimes I have an urge to play with more emphasis.
If you're playing the piano, you may hit the keys harder. I know if you're playing drums, you sometimes only hit the drums harder to release the anointing that is within you. And the rhythm that you use can also have an effect.
In fact, rhythm is one of the most powerful effects that music has. And they've even studied this from a medical point of view. And music is sometimes even used as therapy for physical problems.
Now, rhythm often is linked with the natural rhythm that we have in our body. Our heart beats at a regular rate. We breathe at a regular rate.
Rhythm that matches a body rhythm can actually begin to affect your body. If you speed it up, it may speed the body up a little bit and make it a bit more excited and maybe motivate you to action. If you slow it down that it's mellow, it brings peace and relaxation.
But if you slow it down too much, it produces depression. Because when you're music is so powerful, so powerful, and it can affect body, soul, and spirit of people. Listen to it.
Now, if you add the anointing of God to that action, how much more powerful is that effect going to be? If it can happen even in a natural realm, how much more when we add the anointing of God to that music? And in the first message I preached on music, I likened that to an extra frequency that you add in. A bit like the frequency that only a dog can hear with a dog whistle. And very often people don't actually hear it, but they feel it.
It begins to have an effect on them. Often people are only moved by the style of music they like. Now, I like rhythmic music.
I like mellow music. There are many genres and some I'm more comfortable with than others. And I think each person tends to be comfortable with the genres that they grew up with.
But they say, and I'm not saying this, I read this up. They say that certain kinds of music, like heavy metal and rap, tend to have a negative effect on people. Sometimes produce criminals and all sorts of negative effects.
Now, is that because it's too fast or because it's too noisy? I don't know. But there's something mixed in there, a power that there is in music. And we can take that and add the extra power of the anointing.
How much more can we accomplish? Well, can you have anointed metal music? I'm sure you can. Unfortunately, people need to get past the music part before they get to the anointing. Well, I don't like that heavy metal stuff.
I'm a country boy. I like country music. Country music is designed to make you sad about your dog that died and the woman who left you and a lost love.
Just listen to it. There's very few positive songs in country music. The style is great.
It's mellow. See, but what are the words saying to you? See, the words of the song are preaching a message. And depending on what frame of mind you're in, the message is coming through.
It's a known fact that people will get wrapped up in a popular song and really enjoy it. And then eventually they learn the words and begin to sing them and discover what the song is actually saying. Sometimes it can be frightening what the song is actually saying.
This is the message that was being preached to you while you were enjoying the music. Well, which genre of music should we play? What kind of people are you ministering to? You say, well, yeah, I like country music, but, you know, I've got a crowd of young people that are really into rock. Well, perhaps you should learn to get to like rock music, too, because that's going to have a great influence on them.
Say, no, I'm just going to force them to like country music. You're flogging a dead horse. It's not going to happen.
So there's a lot more to using music, you know, than just being skillful and even being anointed. You can release an anointing and you can release an influence that is natural in a sense at the same time. And if you can use those together as part of your ministry, it gives you an extra vehicle, an extra tool, a supplemental help to make you more effective in your ministry.
Well, that's music. How about singing? Well, singing is simply extended speech. Singing is speaking with long vowels.
Vowels. Your vowels are more important than the consonants. That means if you can speak, you can sing.
I hear people say to me all the time, you know, I can't sing. My singing is terrible. I'm tone deaf.
So you're dumb. You can't speak. Oh, no, no, I can speak.
Well, then you can sing. In fact, you would be amazed that even when you speak, you're singing. Did you hear me go right up there? Well, you know, I can't sing those high notes.
No, but I can. If I get angry. Well, I didn't struggle to get that note.
Are you going to try and sing it? I can't get those high notes. Yes, you can. You're just trying to get them in a way that's different to the way you get them when you speak.
And God made us naturally to speak. And he made us naturally to sing. And the most popular form of singing and vocal training today is known as SLS.
It actually stands for speech level singing, but it can also stand for sing like you speak. I struggled for years trying to get my voice better. And everybody said I had such a lovely speaking voice.
I said, Lord, that's not fair. You gave me a nice speaking voice, but you gave me a terrible singing voice. And eventually I heard him say to me, if you would learn to sing the same way you speak, people would enjoy your singing as much as they are listening to your voice.
The penny dropped. I was trying so hard to get it right. I don't even think when I speak.
I don't think when I go high. I don't think when I go low, I do it automatically. Well, both of these may require some training.
Some people are not very good at speaking. Praise the Lord, I was blessed with a good speaking voice. I guess I developed it more becoming a preacher.
So I can sing like I preach, maybe. You know, there are vocal coaches that teach you how to speak. But you know, I was born with this speaking voice.
Don't talk nonsense. The most you could do when you were a baby was saying, you weren't born with no speaking voice. Somebody had to teach you how to speak.
And if they ever brought you up to speak, mumbled, didn't speak properly, you probably ended up speaking the same. Can't change it. People go for special lessons on public speaking to learn how to speak loudly and clearly.
I'll be trying to teach my staff, the ministry team, how to preach better by speaking differently while they're preaching. It doesn't come naturally. And learning to sing, even though you speak well, doesn't come naturally.
Yeah, you get the odd guy who probably had a father or mother who was a famous singer, and they grew up being exposed to somebody who can sing, and they copied them and ended up getting a good voice. Yes, I'm not denying that some people just seem to have it. I wasn't one of them, and I'm pretty sure most of you are not either.
So you can develop it. Yeah, well, you know, I tried a few times, and my singing was so bad, people said, please give us a break. Just, you know, play CDs, not music.
Play something that we can listen to, you know? And so they got a great musical ability. They play CDs instead of playing instruments. You can break out of that if you want to.
If you don't want to, nobody's going to force you. But it's a powerful weapon that you can use to add as a vehicle and a tool for your ministry. Now, words carry spiritual power.
The reason they do is because words originate from the human spirit. Animals cannot do this. They don't have a spirit.
They cannot use words. You say, yes, but animals can sing. Have you heard the birds singing? Did you feel the anointing hit you as you listened to that bird tweeping? I usually want to throw stone at them sometime early in the morning when you're trying to sleep.
I know some people like to listen to the sound of birds, and they can be sweet. My wife loves birds. She could probably listen to them for hours.
There's no rhythm. There's no melody. They're a bit like jazz singers.
Sorry, I don't like jazz because a jazz singer sings the same song five times in five different ways because they don't follow a specific rhythm or a specific pattern. They're just ad-lib. Well, if you like that and you can get it anointed and you can get into the presence of the Lord with it, please feel free.
I find it difficult, probably because I've got different music templates. It doesn't matter. But I'm afraid animals cannot release anointing through singing because their singing doesn't come from a human spirit and doesn't include words.
They can make music, but we can't really call it singing, can we? Now, when you mix words with melody as you do in a song, it becomes a lot more effective and powerful. Do you know that we tend to remember the words of songs more than we remember words that are spoken? Come on, you have your favorite song from way back when. And when you're just feeling happy and you feel like singing, what is it that you sing? What's the first song that comes to your mind? It's one of those songs that you learnt.
See, sometimes you might be singing, things go better with Coca-Cola. Oh, music and ads, they go together. They want you to sing their ads and remember the product and go and buy it.
Very powerful force. Now, here's something interesting I discovered in reading up on this. They discovered that Alzheimer patients can more easily remember songs and the words in the songs, and they can remember what was said to them.
Why is that? Music has an amazing power. It can break right through even some of those areas of the brain that are struggling to remember. So music is very powerful in programming things into people that they will never forget.
Words paint pictures, and we always remember pictures more easily than words spoken. I doubt whether you'll be able to repeat one sentence that I spoke today, even though you heard it, without going and playing the recording. But if any pictures were built into your mind while I was speaking, you will take those pictures away with you.
When you watch a movie, you remember the whole story, and you can re-describe it because it's in picture form. See, words have this power, and singing has that power, because music combined with words builds very strong pictures. It goes beyond pictures that you see.
It builds with it emotions and experiences and a whole mix of stuff that gets stored deep down inside of you, and the next time that music comes out, it pulls all of those memories out. We have templates that are for some music, and they get triggered when we read it. Come on, they play a bit of music on the radio.
Oh yes, I remember that. I was 17 when they played that. I'd just been dumped by my girlfriend, and I was really feeling sad.
And the feelings come all the way back again, all the negative feelings. Well, hopefully, there are some positive ones as well. I can remember that music.
It was there the night I proposed to my wife. Ah, it brings back such lovely feelings. See, music has that power.
If only we could learn to harness that power and add it to the anointing of God and use it, it would make you so powerful in ministry. You add melody to words, it stirs the emotions and the feelings. Now, we're going to release anointing.
What kind of anointing are we going to release? Well, there's two kinds of anointings. You have what we call the internal anointing, which comes from deep down withinside of you, and this anointing is always for you personally. When the internal anointing is released from within you, it affects you personally, but it doesn't affect others.
So, listening to music, singing music, playing it, can stir up some of that internal anointing in you, and you can feel so awesome. You can get into worship and feel the presence of the Lord and feel lifted up and wrapped in Him and having such a wonderful time with Him. But nobody around about you knows what's going on.
You're having your own little party all by yourself. Very often, when we worship together, we can get into that habit of just meeting our own needs. Very early in our ministry, when we were stuck in Mexico and we had nobody to preach to except a few of us in the home, we'd worship every day.
We developed this thing of each of us coming into the presence of the Lord and touching Him, and we all felt it. It was beautiful. We had our first conference, and we stood up knowing that we know how to bring the anointing of God.
We stood up, and we got into that, and we felt such a beautiful presence. That anointing of God was, everybody must feel it. I had my eyes closed in worship, and then I opened my eyes and looked at the people, and they were staring at us.
They weren't participating as though they were watching a show. It wasn't touching them at all. See, now, many people make this mistake with music and worship.
They think, because I feel so wonderful while worshiping, it's going to affect everybody else. No, you've simply stirred up the internal anointing, and it's wonderful. It's wonderful you and the Lord are having a glorious party together.
See, but that is no use in ministering to others. In fact, very often, even a worship group one who really does know how to move in the Spirit, maybe got several prophets in it, unlike many worship groups today, who are simply skilled musicians and singers, they can really feel the anointing of God, but it doesn't touch the people. The only thing that's going to touch the people is their music, and if they're playing a style of music that that particular group of people enjoy, they can leave the meeting and say, I really enjoyed the worship today.
You know, you could say the same thing while playing the radio and listen to something that's not even Christian. You've got to have the same enjoyable experience from the music. It's not the anointing of God.
It's going to take more than that. It's going to require the other kind of anointing. You're going to have to add something extra to it if you want to influence others.
Now, the external anointing comes not from inside of you. It comes from above first. It comes from the powerhouse in heaven, the full mains up there, and so if you want to bring that anointing, you're going to have to know how to reach up and grab hold of the mains.
Okay, so now you've got a hold of the mains. It's only going through you. You're going to have to throw the switch.
When you throw the switch, the lights come on, and out it goes. Now it goes out and it touches the others. Now your actions are anointed.
Your words are anointed. If you have a ministry mantle, that mantle is activated and comes to life. Both your singing and your music can be part of that mantle, but actually it will work with any artistic skill.
Well, how do we do this? I'm not going to tell you today. We have a whole course called the School of the Supernatural where we're going to teach you all these principles in quite a lot of detail. If you want to know how to tap into the external anointing, it's a much bigger teaching than I can give you in one message today, but I want to tell you it is possible.
If you have received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and you know the anointing of God, you can learn to reach up into the heavenly realm, grab hold of that power, and throw the switch and release it outwards so that your music and your singing and your preaching and anything that you do becomes anointed with the external anointing, and then it goes out and it begins to touch and affect other people. So in conclusion, how can you use music in ministry? Well, firstly, you can use it to stir up the internal anointing inside of you. You can do it by listening to anointed music or by singing yourself.
Sometimes, perhaps, you need somebody else to play it for you because you don't have that skill. Well, the Bible gives us a prophet who had this problem. One would think that being a prophet, he would know a bit more, but he didn't.
One of the greatest prophets, but he didn't. Do you remember when the prophet Samuel told young Saul that he was going to go and meet prophets? They were going to be playing music along the way. That was part and parcel of the prophetic.
But the prophet Elijah, music had the power to move him, but he hadn't learned how to play it himself. And so on one occasion, when he wanted to have the Spirit of God move on him quicker without praying and seeking and waiting, he called for a musician. 2 Kings 3, verse 15.
He said, but bring me now a musician. And what happened was that when the musician played, the hand of the Lord Yahweh came upon him and he prophesied. So you want to get into the anointing? Well, I do it by picking up my guitar and singing.
If you can't do that, go listen to somebody else picking up their guitar and singing. But you know, it's so much easier to pick up your own guitar. You know, it's like getting your own prophetic word instead of going to find a prophet to give you one.
It's available to you if you'll make the effort. It's not going to fall on you. There's no three easy steps to learn to play the guitar and two easy steps to sing.
It takes training, takes time, takes effort. Now you can play music under the anointing. David did this to praise the Lord and it helped him every time he was feeling down.
When David was feeling discouraged, he went and cried to the Lord. Oh Lord, everybody's against me. Everybody hates me.
Oh Lord, my life is so miserable. He did those in songs. They're recorded in the book of Psalms, which were songs.
David cried out to the Lord with his guitar. By the time he was finished, it had changed. The Lord began to lift him up and speak to him.
He started out depressed and he ended up rejuvenated and refreshed. And of course, we know how he did that with King Saul. And King Saul was all depressed and full of demons.
Just a bit of David's good old music and lifted the cloud away. Oh, music is so powerful, folks. Why don't we use it more? You can sing in worship to the Lord or by yourself at home.
If you can speak in tongues, it's so easy. You don't even need to remember the words of the song or the tune. Just make them up as you go.
So I can't sing in tune. Who cares? Go up and down the scales. Sing the same note over and over again.
Who cares? You do it in the spirit of the Lord in worship. Stir up that anointing within. You can do it in worship at church, in a group.
You can pick up a corporate anointing which can help you to join with the others and pick up some of their anointings and flow together. Then you can use it to release the anointing to others. How do you do this? By playing and singing in a group of people, usually in church.
Well, when you do that, you'll get noticed. You can't stand up here and play or sing without people noticing you. You know, if you're doing it quietly there in the pews, they're not going to notice you.
But if you're standing up here and saying, I would like to sing you a song today, all eyes are fixed on you. Well, you've got their attention now. Now maybe that you've got the attention, you can start ministering to them.
Yeah, you've heard stories like the guy puts his hat on the ground and starts walking around in the middle of a crowd. He's walking around in his hat and people start to gather. What's this guy doing? He's walking around in his hat.
Eventually, the whole crowd gathered, watching this guy walk around in his hat. He picks up his hat and he puts it on. He starts to speak.
He's got a whole captive audience. Well, music can do that. It can get people's attention.
Instead of falling asleep there in the pews and daydreaming about where they'd rather be than here today, they might actually listen to what you say. And if you're now speaking under the anointing of God, you're going to get to them and you're going to minister to them. Now everyone is attracted to good music and singing.
I've yet to find somebody who, if I ask them, do you enjoy music, says no. It's built into us to enjoy music. When you feel happy, you start making up your own songs.
As bad as you sing, it's built into us. Oh, once you get attention, use the spoken words. But just remember, you're not there to entertain.
Now there are a lot of Christian singing groups out there today who are very skillful musicians and also very good singers. And the tendency is to go out, draw crowds of people and sing to them. What do you do when you finish singing? I'll tell you what happens.
Most of the time, they had their program. They went through all the songs. And even if they're singing anointed Christian songs, which hopefully have touched the people, the time comes to the end of the gig.
And we have to say it's over for tonight, folks. God bless you. See you.
Bye. And they walk off. I knew a preacher who always took a good singing group with him whenever he was invited to go and preach somewhere.
And he got them to stand up and sing and entertain the people and stir them up and make them ready. And when they finished, he stood up and said, now I've got the word and he'd preach. Very powerful.
Very powerful. See, music isn't an end in itself. It's a tool.
And so is there such a thing as a music ministry? Yes and no. I believe music can be part of your ministry. And if you are particularly anointed by God and God uses your music, God may use you more often in that kind of ministry than in others.
But you can't say I'm called to be a musician. See, David was one of the best musicians ever, but he was called to be king. See, that was only part of what he did.
So what do you need to do? Get the people's attention. Use the music. Play music.
Learn to do it well that people will at least listen to you if that's what you're going to use it for. Then stand up there, grab hold of the mains, throw the switch, start releasing that anointing to the people. Music is a very powerful force.
You need to use every opportunity that you can to tap into its power to enhance the ministry that God has called you to. Amen. Father, we thank you for your word.
We thank you for this wonderful gift that you've given us of music. Lord, may we learn to appreciate it as a gift from you and not something from the world that's often motivated by Satan and demon powers who are preaching their gospel instead of yours. May you people rise up and embrace this gift and this tool and add it to their ministries to become more effective for you, Lord.
I pray that as I've shared, you would have inspired many to look at this seriously and to realize that they can add more to their ministry that will make them more effective. I thank you for bringing that conviction and that challenge and that motivation that all of you people will rise up and make full use of every gift and ability that you've made available to us to use to fulfill the wonderful calling that you've placed on our lives. Thank you for it, Lord, in Jesus' name.
Amen.
