There are some experiences in life that reveal things in yourself that you may not have noticed without that experience. You go into them thinking you understand, and somewhere in the middle you find something in yourself you didn’t know was there.

That happened to me this summer.

I love leading worship in the local church, and I’m grateful I’ve gotten to do it most of my life. But like anything, it comes with its own challenges. Mine has always been the ambiguity of the arts. When I lead worship, I’m at the mercy of the poetry and the melody and the dynamics of a room. I can’t control how any of it lands. It’s one of the reasons I’ve struggled to write music. I don’t like relinquishing control to poetry.

What I didn’t realize is that I’d come to believe preaching didn’t have that problem. I thought preaching was explicit. Clear. From a pulpit I could say what I actually meant and, with painstaking clarity, articulate an idea.

Then Alex went on sabbatical and I preached week in and week out.

Here’s what I learned. Preaching is no different than worship. People hear a sermon the same way they hear a song. They hear it through their mood, through the week they just had, through whatever they walked in carrying. Two people sit in the same row and walk out having heard two different sermons. I had no more control over anyone’s transformation from behind a pulpit than I do behind a microphone.

Which turns out to be the whole point. It’s the Holy Spirit who does the work. He’s the one who gets access to people’s hearts, not me and not my craft. I can be clear, I can be prepared, I can labor over a set or a sermon until it’s the best I have in me, and none of that is what opens somebody up. He does that.

So why am I telling you this? Because preaching this summer taught me that what we do in song is every bit as powerful in the hands of the Spirit as what happens from the pulpit. Only God changes a life, and He can use a song, a rhythm, a mood set in a room, or a sermon to do it. He isn’t ranking them.

So let this be a strong invitation. Lead with joy. Bring your best and prepare like it matters, because it does. Then release it, the same way you already have to release a song the second it leaves your mouth. We don’t have to control any of it. We simply show up to be faithful and watch what God does with what we hand Him.