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Tonight I was helping out with a Mandarin service at Highpoint Community and was tasked to lead the Praise and Worship. To cut the long story short, it was a task completed only by the grace of God due to the few reasons:
  1. It was the first time I was leading praise and worship on stage...
  2. In a service setting...
  3. In Mandarin...
  4. Playing guitar at the same time...
  5. With two songs that I was not familiar with (I was assigned the songs)
  6. We changed one of the songs just before we started (thank God I know the song)
  7. The church band decided to support - it was my first time playing with them...
  8. Only one hour to practice with three backup singers...
I guess there's a first time for everything. To give more context, this is the first time in so many months I played in a band setting as well, not to mention I have never played with this particular band before (but they were good). It was indeed a difficult task that I think it was only due to the grace of God. Thank God for the many support given by the rest of the people as well.

Through this experience, I also realised that I still love playing guitar on stage. I have mentioned this many times before but yet, everytime I start playing guitar on stage as part of a Praise and Worship band, I can identify with Eric Liddell in Chariots of Fire, when he commented that when he runs, he feels God's pleasure. When I play guitar on stage, I can really feel God's pleasure and it's something that I cherish a lot. Of course, I sometimes ask myself if this is reason enough for me to continue with guitaring as a stage minister. My answer has always been a 'no' and the main reason for the answer is because I know there are other areas that I have made a conscious decision to focus on.

Yet, I think God knows my heart and He does give me opportunity to serve in this area even though I am no longer a stage guitarist. 

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