When Is Excellence a Problem?

The Intuitive Musician

You know what practice affords you? Hours upon hours of time in the practice room? Day after day playing the difficult, boring, hard scales and technique?

Intuition.

Yep, that’s it. Music becomes a matter of intuition. You no longer have to think about how to play the instrument and you can focus your full mental energies on leading people in worship. This is why we’re after skill and excellence.

It’s not because we want to sound great. It’s not because we want to make a name for ourselves or be the most creative bunch in town. It’s because we want the practical matters of music and music theory to be automatic…without a thought. That will enable us to lead worship more effectively.

Consider when you weren’t a good musician. Or maybe you’re just learning right now. It takes all of your mind and more to figure out what you’re doing. I remember those days. I had no clue. Nothing was intuitive. Every chord required every mental faculty and every drop of sweat in my body.

Let’s relate this to some practical band issues:

• Memorizing your music forces you to be prepared, thus being more ready to be used by the Holy Spirit to do what He wants to do, and see what He wants you to see (rather than having your head in a chord chart).

• Knowing the Nashville number system helps you see music more clearly and flow easier because you can transpose into other keys quickly. It increases your versatility to be used in spontaneous/prophetic ways.

• Having your rig set up in advance takes the guesswork out of your tone selection in a worship set. Instead, you can focus your mental energies on the question, “What is the Holy Spirit up to today?”

Knowing the setlist backward and forward enables you to temper your playing to serve the moment. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do it.

Do you see where we’re going with this? Catch a vision for excellence that is bigger than getting opportunities. Catch a vision that is bigger than sounding amazing. Catch a vision that is bigger than how many compliments and social media likes you can amass.

When music becomes intuition, you can play prophetically on your instrument. You can look up with eyes of compassion.

So let’s move beyond our skills. Let’s use our skills in pursuit of God doing the miraculous through us. Let’s put zero confidence in the flesh. I don’t know about you, but I want to do with my life the things that only God can do.

Are you in?