08/27/2026
Fires and Amplifiers!
Fires are awesome! A big bonfire is exciting! It lights up the night and is an awesome place for community. Smaller fires can be cozy and warming and create a great place for bonding. But when they get too small, keeping a fire going can be taxing.
Likewise, guitar amplifiers are made to be used at high capacity. It’s not just that they are softer when you turn them down, you don’t get the same quality. For tube amps, eventually they can get too hot and you need to turn them off, just like you gotta have a Sabbath.
I want to propose something to you. If life isn’t really where you want it to be, if you’re feeling tired, quite possibly you aren’t living at high enough capacity. As a worship leader, it can be easy for me to fall into the thoughts of just picking songs for Sunday, running the rehearsal, and playing for the service, but that’s not exciting to me (frankly, it’s not exciting to anybody else either).
But when I work at higher capacity, make my job or service to others be done in a way that excites me, it probably brings out my joy in doing it. Then it creates joy in others when I serve them and they pick up part of what I am giving off so they live at higher capacity. It not only makes me feel better, it makes them feel better, and investing in what I’m doing shows that I’m investing in service to others. And quite frankly, that is also the place where people want to keep seeing you work at higher capacity, so they are more likely to hire you, support you, tell people about you. It’s the way it’s supposed to work.
You can view it as extra work, but the truth is there is a spot where putting in the extra work actually makes it easier. Try hopping up and down for 30 seconds where you’re just jumping about once per second (jump, stop, jump, stop...). Then try hopping up and down for 30 seconds like you’re jumping rope. The second is doing more but yet it seems easier to keep going because you don’t have to restart the motion. It just keeps carrying itself.
We don’t just need this in our personal lives. We need this communally. We need to be fueling and fanning each other’s fires until there are big and bright. That’s where people see the glory of God among us as a community. And quite frankly, when all of our fires are too small to do much good, they actually feel like a big hassle to keep going.
Keep the fires burning and the amplifiers cranked...to 11. 😉
