Understanding Anointing - A Confidence

Recently I was talking to a guy who I hold in high esteem, a worship leader who has a superb pastoral gift in ushering in God's presence through that.

We were walking along the streets of London talking about church, worship teams in church and how does one help bring in more gifts (people who have worship gifts) in our worship teams.

I was telling him how based on my experience the biggest struggle I've found in people coming through is their lack of confidence to which he responded in the affirmation and asked me "But, why do you think that is?". "I have no idea" was my response.

We were talking further and he mentioned to me 3 things that one can do to combat confidence levels in a worship context. I must add, I do think they can be applied to other situation as well. But his answers were quite effective to my mind.

Growing In Your Gifting/Skill

That's the first thing he said. If someone needs to grow in confidence, they need to grow in their gift. For example - if you are a singer but are not confident in singing, go for vocal lessons. That increases your skill/gift and that in turn gives you more confidence in your own abilities.

The same for other areas in life - to be a better cook, you need to learn more by learning from external sources.

Pretty straightforward

Experience

I think this doesn't need explanation. But when he said this I was like "Yeah".

To give an example of when I started leading worship at church. When I started for the first time I was nervous because 1. I didn't know the people 2. I wasn't aware of the culture 3. Didn't know how people would respond to my style of leading worship 4. If what I shared during worship would be relevant to the church and the list could go on.

As time has gone on, experience of leading monthly helped me understand my strengths, and playing to those strengths I enjoy taking up-beat songs at the start of worship, it helped me understand my weaknesses (I'm not as adept as I'd like to be on the acoustic, and hence I can let the Electric Guitarist/other instruments know prior what songs I would want him/her to cover for me instrumentally.

Experience helps one in understanding their gift/skill and working around that to their benefit.

Resting In The Anointing

This has been a huge revelation for me. Ever since I've come here, he's been trying to drill that in my head. Okay, not drill, but allow this phrase to soak in my mind. I've honestly found it hard to wrap my head around that. Resting in the anointing. Resting in your gifting.

God has either given you the anointing to do what you're doing or he hasn't. No amount of striving is going to get you to wherever you want to go. If you want the Spirit of God to move in your meeting, yes pray! But don't allow your mind to let you think that you're going to do something to allow him to get there, because you aren't.

Resting in the anointing, if you've prepared a preach and want God to move among people - pray but rest in his anointing over your life. Pray and rest knowing that God's anointing is on you and he will work in and through you by his own doing!

Hope this short post helped and is pushing you to think - would value your comments and thoughts!