How Great Is Our God: 5 Days Toward a Worship-Led Life by Chris TomlinExemplo

Day 5: The Songs That Never Grow Old

Over the years I have led worship in a lot of large venues. One that stands out is a two-night show at Red Rocks Amphitheatre outside Denver. But what makes me remember these nights was the weather. It poured down rain for an entire two-hour set for both nights, and it was about forty-two degrees outside, but almost everyone stayed for the whole show. My fingers could barely move across the guitar strings, they were so cold.

But the people! Wow… As I looked out on a sea of rain ponchos, there was a new meaning to the lyrics “like a flood His mercy rains unending love, amazing grace.” I love singing to God in places like these.

I have sat in small rooms off to the side of these massive places with worship leaders. I love to spend time with worship leaders. They “get” the worship-led life more than most. I especially love to spend time with those leaders who know that worship is more than just singing. That’s the thing about a worship-led life, isn’t it? Songs are just the soundtrack. Our lives count the most. How are our everyday lives leading the worship of God in our everyday world?

Back to those little meetings in the small rooms with worship leaders. They always ask tons of great questions, many of which I can’t begin to answer. They want to know how to write better songs, how to fade into the background while at the center of the stage, how to know when to speak and when not to speak, how to be both planned and spontaneous, and I could go on. I admit that some of their questions bother me, especially this one: “How do you keep singing the same songs night after night after night? Don’t you ever get tired of these songs?” I always want to ask them in return (though I never do), “Do you ever get tired of the same God week after week after week?”

Instead, I say to them and to you and to anyone and everyone: the songs themselves are not what’s most import- ant; it’s the meaning behind them; it’s who the songs are for. I’ll bet I have been to ten thousand sporting events over the course of my life, and at every single one of those events we sing the same song. We always sing the national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner.” And you know what? I never get tired of singing that song. From what I see around me, no one else does either. Why is that? Because of what the song is about. “The Star-Spangled Banner” lifts our hearts and minds to the greatness of a nation, to the cost of freedom, to the trauma and the drama of battle, and to the nobility of bravery it inspires.

If we never tire of singing about a great nation, how could we ever tire of singing glorious songs about our great God—even the same songs over and over? My old friend Matt Redman said it best in his classic song “The Heart of Worship”:

“I’ll bring you more than a song, for a song in itself is not what you have required.”

Sometimes people get focused on the kind of experience a particular song gives them in worship. They come away from a gathering saying things like, “The worship was amazing” or, “That song was really something.” Or they mutter, “They are really overplaying this song” or, “I am getting burned out on that one.” To me, this is a sign we have missed the point.

People get tired of songs because they no longer have the same kind of experience in worship with the song they once did. We want to walk away from a gathering of God’s peo- ple not talking about the power of the songs or the worship or our experience of it all but about the greatness of God.

When is the last time you walked out of a great movie and all you wanted to talk about was the soundtrack? No! You wanted to rave about the movie. Songs are the soundtrack. Worship is the life. And as we grow in the worship-led life, the songs never get old.

SING WITH ME

I’ve got two songs for us today—one of my oldest songs and one of my newest. Let’s start with the new one. It is called “Always,” and I think you will quickly see why I have chosen it. The old one is called “Forever.” I have led it thou- sands of times by now and it never gets old. Let’s get lost in God today as we sing these songs to Him. And for good measure, let’s also sing Matt Redman’s “10,000 Reasons.”

HOW GREAT?

Have you ever found yourself being more focused on the song than on who the song is leading us to worship? How can we keep songs and even our own individual experience in perspective? How might we find our way back to the heart of worship?