by By Mike Michira
By the time the pastor was stepping on the podium to pray, I was deep in worship but little did I know it was time for practicals. She did something unusual and unexpected.
“In light of the words of the song that the worship team has powerfully led us in,” she said, “I would like to invite you all to kneel down as we …”
I’m not sure I heard the rest of what she said. What followed seemed to be the longest 10 seconds of my life.
My wife was standing on my left and my son and little girl were seated on the next seats. For a moment I thought the pastor had invited us to take our seats as we pray because this is the norm. But no. She had actually invited us to kneel.
In church we don’t like to be disturbed, we like to be handled with care 🤣. I took a quick peep on the floor and there is no way I was going to kneel down. You see this particular day, I was wearing a white trouser. Plus, who asks people to kneel down in church on a misty Sunday morning, even if the worship team just ministered powerfully about kupungua ili Yesu aongezeke (decreasing as Jesus increases)?
I peeped around and let me tell you, I was not alone. I could almost feel the mood, the reaction, the resistance. That mood was so intense. It’s as if the pastor had used some curse words on stage. You almost could catch it 🤓.
Remember all this is happening within 10 seconds and all this time I don’t know what is going through my lovely wife’s mind. This day she was also elegantly dressed and I am sure it was going to be a tough call for her too.
While I was deep in my 10 second thoughts, I heard the Holy Spirit rebuke me sharply. It was as if he had been searching for Isaiah 29:13 perusing back and forth the pages of my heart and decided to pull up Matthew 15:8 instead because it is easier to locate Matthew 🤣.
[The Lord says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.” Isaiah 29:13.]
[This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. Matthew 15:8]
How could I, a few minutes ago, be deeply engaged and emotional while singing ‘Mimi nipungue, wewe uongezeke’ whereas now when the minister asks a simple thing of me, I am here having a 10-second struggle?
When the knees hit the floor
As the clock was hitting the 10th second, I carried all my pride and questions and doubts and remorse and down we went. I humbly knelt down and asked God to forgive me for singing words I did not mean.
No sooner had my knees hit the dirty floor (well to be honest it was not very dirty, may be a little dusty, but I was wearing a white trouser remember😁), I saw my wife also follow suit and kneel right there beside me.
Here is the highlight.
My two-year-old daughter, as though she had been watching me all this time and reading through my 10 second thoughts and waiting to see what I would do, also rose up, came and knelt besides mum and daddy, and our son joined in. Let me tell you, it was the most beautiful thing ever 😭.
Seeing my whole family just kneel there before God, white trouser or not, elegant dress or not, child or not, in understanding or not. I realized how important it is to obey God. Especially as a worshipper and as a man. It gave me a challenge about how authentic we should be in worship.
Authentic worship
Do the songs we sing mean anything to us? Are they just emotional jabs we use to get a ‘high’ from the short singing session we call worship on Sunday morning? Can I actually live the song at work, in the matatu on Tuesday evening or in traffic on Thursday morning?
As someone who has been in the singing ministry since I was a Sunday school child, I am beginning to have a different view of what it means to be a true worshipper. Encounters like these are bringing to light what Jesus said in John 4.
The moral of the story is that as a worship leader, don’t lead the church so powerfully in Boaz Danken’s Mimi Nipungue on a misty Sunday morning when the pastor might just step to the pulpit and ask the whole church to kneel before God. Because there might be a man with his family in the congregation who will have a 10-second battle and the Holy Spirit might rebuke him then he ends up repenting and creating a beautiful moment for his family but more so raising true worship before God.
You get the drift?🤓.
Mike Michira is a music minister and worship leader. You can interract with his music on https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7dpzGDPL8kYREWT409wr_g
Great thoughts and challenge. May I worship in truth from deep within