Have you ever been in the middle of singing a song to the congregation during a church service and all of sudden you find your mind has drifted far away, thinking about something else? Your thoughts may have drifted to what you’d be doing later that day or back to something that happened earlier in the week. You may have even caught yourself thinking about how you look or how you sound, instead of focusing your thoughts on the Lord and the words you’re singing.
The thoughts may be as random as “did I turn off the coffee pot, did I leave the iron turned on, or where should we go for lunch?” As each random thought pops into your mind you chase it for a bit, until another random thought pops into your mind. All of a sudden you snap back and think “where am I in this song?!”
I’ve caught myself lost in thought while singing. It’s crazy isn’t it? Our minds can get so easily distracted! How can I truly be worshiping with my voice if my mind is far away?
I’ve found the same thing to be true during my Quiet Time with the Lord. Right in the middle of praying, a thought can pop into my mind and before I know it I’m thinking about that instead of what I was talking to the Lord about.
Our minds can become a battleground while worshiping. And all it takes is a simple thought to get us distracted and cause us to offer mindless worship. The enemy wants to distract us and get our minds off of worshiping. 2 Corinthians 10:5 exhorts us to “take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ.” (ESV) and Romans 15:6 encourages us to worship with our hearts and our minds – with one voice and one mind.
I always encourage the musicians I work with to pay attention to the words they’re singing, using their minds, engaging their minds to worship along with their hearts. I Peter 1 calls us to live with minds that are alert. Even in our thoughts we are to be alert, ready for action and purposeful.
Now there will always be times when our minds drift and that’s okay. But when we’re leading in worship, ministering through music, or even in our time alone with the Lord, we need to be alert.
Let’s ask the Lord to help us to focus on Him while we sing – that our minds would not be so easily distracted. Let’s determine to engage our minds and our hearts when we worship. Set our minds to action, present in the moment, focused purposefully on worshiping the Lord – never offering mindless worship! Let’s worship with alert hearts and minds!