The Fruit of The Spirit
Man, 2023 already starting out as a doozy for anyone else? Let me tell you what, it feels like there wasn’t any time to rest even over the Holidays! As you know we just finished up one of our busiest seasons of the year, CHRISTMAS! As the music and tech director it’s a huge event off my plate, but next up comes Easter….and I’m already working on putting it together. The past couple weeks have been nonstop with everything going on in my life.
Let me share something with you a bit personal. Overseeing the entire production of every service can make it hard to be present. There’s so many bits and pieces to making sure that we give excellence to our God every Sunday that it takes work to be THERE every week. Sometimes I can get so focused on making sure things run smoothly that my anxiety can peak pretty hard. (10:30 worship team has seen me loose it several times because of tech issues haha.) When things go wrong and it’s crunch time there’s only one thing to do though…Give it to God.
I read a passage yesterday morning that really hit home. Galatians 5:22-23, “But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” Whenever anxiety is knocking on my door, or I’m stressed about how a service is going to go, or maybe when I haven’t prepared quite as much as I should for something, I think this is something that is so important to remember. THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT IS JOY! Not anxiety. Not stress. Not anger. We’ve been given this beautiful and wonderful gift from THE FATHER HIMSELF! Think about it, his timing is always perfect, kinda makes it hard to stress if you really internalize that.
So this week I challenge you, the next time you’re stressed or anxiety ridden…Remember that verse. Remember the fruit of the spirit. Remember the gift that God has given us in the form of trust in him and his perfect timing. Take a deep breath, pray about it, and hand it over to God. Life can be hard, heck, 2023 might already be hard…but we have something that’s so much more powerful than the trials we’ll face. JESUS!
Joey Ennulat, Director of WorshipArts
