Pride or Prejudice?

I got an e-mail from my friend Brian in phoenix the other day that really set me to thinking about pride and how he tries to avoid any notion of himself in his own life. What does this have to do with me?.... Well, I sing. When I say I sing I mean I have sung professionally all over the world. I was the praise leader at my church. I sing now on the ‘worship group’ ( don’t let the leader hear me say that! We are a band not a worship team…) at the church I attend now. I mean I sing and I can sing. This is nothing I did of my own effort. I did not take singing lessons. I don’t read music all that well, but the voice that God gave me is amazing. I know you think I am patting my own back and that anyone who has to say all of this is bragging, but I am not. God gave me a true gift…and I squandered it for most of my life. I didn’t understand what I had. I sang in bars and ‘honky tonks’ :) not really honky tonks, but you get the drift. I have sung from New York City to LA. I have opened for people whose names you would recognize. Then, for reasons I will explain another time, for a few years, I didn’t sing at all. I sat and listened to all the sopranos at my church sing these amazing arias and felt inadequate. I sing second alto. Almost as close to tenor as you can get. People want to feel goosebumps when they hear “Jesus Music” and my singing doesn’t effect people like that. So I didn’t let it out. I stood by my own little pew and sang with the rest of the people, not wanting to stand out. Then one day a woman in front of me at church turned around and confronted me. “WHY DON'T YOU SING?” I was taken back, ‘I do sing…right here’. ‘NO!’ she said, ‘You have a gift and it’s time for you to share it with the rest of us!” She was pointing and almost angry finger at me. I suddenly was taken to the story of the talents. I was being selfish in my attitude. I was burying what I had been given in the ground. GOD gave me something to share and I was keeping it locked up because I was afraid of what other people might think. That’s pride! I decided to sing one time and haven’t I stopped since. Now that I have allowed God to use my voice, I see that it’s not about goose bumps. It’s about leading people to a connection with God on a level that they can’t normally attain. My singing brings some of them there. Not because of the ‘voice’, but because of God’s presence in that voice. It is nothing I do of my own accord and nothing I can congratulate myself on earning. It just is. I sing. God shows up. Simple as that.