The nonsensical ponderings of Eric Frisch...

God loves to challenge me.  Last night I was given a great opportunity and I responded in the worst possible way.  A little background: I'm scheduled to lead worship for our Otterbein Christian Fellowship group on Thursday night.  I used to lead there all the time, but have only done it twice in the last year or so due to an incredible number of scheduling conflicts.  Needless to say, I was pretty excited about the opportunity to do it again, so I put together a great band and picked an awesome set of 4 songs (what we usually have for the meeting).  Last night I was informed that our speaker who was scheduled for next Thursday had unexpectedly canceled and that they wanted us to play for the entire hour.  To say that I was a little overwhelmed would be an understatement.  At the end of the night, I sat down in my car and cried.  Literally.  How was I going to triple the length of my set, rehearse with the band before Thursday, and still hold to the (admittedly very high) standards that I set for myself?  Those thoughts, plus the conference that I'm playing next weekend and the other events that I'm working on right now were enough to put my in a pretty bad mood.

Fast forward to this evening.  My parents drove in from Wheeling and we went to see Phillips, Craig & Dean play at a church in the area.  I was excited about the show, but pretty down from a long week capped off by last night's events.  Simply put, the show was amazing.  Not only are these three guys great musicians, they are worshipers in the truest sense of the word.  Their passion was obvious as they sang tonight, and God used them to touch my heart.  How could I have responded to an opportunity to praise God and lead His people in worship in such a poor manner?  How could I become so stressed over something so wonderful, something that I love so much?  Tonight, as I sang along with the very songs that I'll be playing on Thursday night, God renewed my spirit and refocused my mind on why I do what I do.  I couldn't be more thankful, and I couldn't be more excited to get in front of OCF on Thursday night and praise God.