Advice for Worship Leaders #2 - Dedicated writing time

Dedicated writing time
A big encouragement I would give to worship leaders is to dedicate time to writing at home. When I first started leading I would try and write songs at home and it was so hard that I eventually gave up and would only write on stage during a set. I love spontaneously writing on sets with my team and I still do it, but the Lord began whispering to my heart a few years ago about the necessity of being a good steward of the craft and starting to write at home as well. 

There is something beautiful about sitting down to write and feeling completely uninspired and all you can do is pray or read your bible because you feel dry as a desert! At first this perplexed and frustrated me. I would say “God, I felt you clearly telling me to draw away into the secret place and write...ok...here I am! I feel nothing! Dry. Dry. Dry.” 

I can’t tell you how many times I feel this way when I sit down for my writing time. So I begin doing the only thing I can do… pray. Then suddenly an idea or passage will randomly pop into my brain. Most of the time I don’t feel a deep groaning… most of the time it’s just an idea. Then I go from there. Once I’m in it, I’m in it. A lot of the times it’s hard for me to stop my writing time because I’m in the middle of writing a song or developing a thought or concept. 

I want to tell you today that you should 100% be writing songs. It’s not for certain personality types or just a select few of so called "gifted people". I believe God has songs reserved for you specifically and He’s asking you to come search them out.

© 2011 Justin Rizzo