Joshua Swanson: Welcome to The Walk; a devotionals podcast led by worship leaders. In this episode, Jon Reddick tells a story about taking care of his grass. Here we go.
Jon Reddick: This last year and this is, this is a little funny because it’s not that big of a deal, but this last year I was super irritated because I was trying to get my grass to be green. It was a thing. I was like, man, I just moved in this neighborhood and I’m like, I want my grass green, I get it. I know the whole grass is green thing, but I literally wanted my grass to be green and I knew that I’d be in and out of town, and so I was like, I’m gonna hire somebody to do it, and all this different stuff and, and uh, and so I hired this person to do it and, and I realized that I was kind of getting a little frustrated because it wasn’t; I would see brown splotches here and brown splotches there. You know, at first, it was green, and then I just started as the sun started coming out, I would see these splotches and I remember kind of being like, this is, this is not cool.
It really kind of hit me in a lot, in a hard way, um, even though it’s just grass, but for me, it was hard in that moment because, to be honest, I, I do have these, these battles with shame, and so I have to find the healthy side of shame and not let the unhealthy side of shame kind of take me down and kind of push me into a prideful place in all these different things and so for me, in that moment, if my grass wasn’t green enough, then I was, the thing I was playing in my mind was that, man, it’s gonna say something about me and they’re gonna think I’m this or that.
So it messed with me. It’s just grass, but, it messed with me. And I remember coming outside one day and right, I mean, literally right as I was in my mind saying, man, this, I might have even been on the phone, being like, I can’t believe this, this, this block is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And right as I walked outside, my neighbor said, uh, my neighbor, they were in a huddle with each other and they said, we were just talking about how amazing your grass is.
It’s, and it wasn’t one of those, like, we’re gonna tell you this like passive-aggressive thing so you can get it together. It was, it was like they were genuine about it and I was thinking to myself, oh, and I remember like sometime that day I had, uh, backed into my driveway, but in order to back in you, you kind of have to pull up, you know, and you get to look over and see the grass and for the first time, I noticed that it really did look green from the street. And that it kind of messed with me. I was like, I can’t see what I had been seeing the entire time.
And I remember um, just being kind of flabbergasted and, and as I studied about, you know, one, one reason is because, you know, I’m standing right over it. But then I started realizing that light has a lot to do with how people see your grass being greener than you do when you’re standing right over it. And it’s funny because the blade itself, the grass blade itself, it absorbs, so when the sun is coming down, it absorbs all the light except for the green. That is what it reflects.
And it’s funny that in life, a lot of times we see all these splotches in our lives. We see all these potholes and all these different things that we think everybody else is looking at. But when God is using our gifts and God is using us, God is letting his light shine down on us.
And what he reflects out to the others is really us pointing up to him is really, um, the thing that he wants to give out to others, whether it’s hope or whatever the message is in that moment, but like so, I, for myself, I had to realize, man, there are a lot of places in my life that I wish were green, but that’s not the way life is.
Life is, life is made it where we all have these splotches, but our king has made it where his light is not only shining down on us and we are absorbing all these other things, but it’s also, uh, reflecting this, uh, beautiful color. Uh, of people see green as growth, right? He’s reflecting this beautiful color of growth out into the world.
And so, um, and so as he’s shining down on us, we are absorbing his goodness, and we are able to reflect the beauty of our king and the rest of the world gets to see the beauty and at the end of the day, it’s not about the spots at all. It’s all about what people are seeing that God can do in each of us.
Joshua Swanson: In the second half of this episode, Jon reminds us how there’s nothing we can do to escape being human and how exciting it is when God redeems our weaknesses and our failures.
For those of you who’ve been waiting for the official launch of the Worship Leader Institute, it’s here. The Institute is live. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, here are a few of our team members to explain.
Barrie Buckner: What’s up y’all. This is Barrie Buckner again, head of strategic partnerships here at Worship Leader Magazine and Authentic Media. I’m excited to share with you an interview with the masterminds behind the Worship Leader Institute, our new platform, launching this fall. First up, I asked the President of WLM, Lexi Fromm, why she and the team decided to create WLI in the first place.
Lexi Fromm: The Worship Leader Institute was an idea from my father and the idea started well beyond my time of beginning at Worship Leader, but it was the last thing that we worked on together before he went to Heaven, and we wanted to create a place for our subscribers to gather beyond just a one-time meeting at the conference and a place where they could continue learning together.
Barrie Buckner: Next, I spoke to the Associate Director of the Institute, Jason Harris, about the cost of the program. Our subscription starts at just $14.99.
Jason Harris: You know, the heart of the Worship Leader Institute is for the local church and for worship leaders desiring to strengthen their leadership and their ministry. And so with that in mind, our goal was to build a program that includes workshops and classes from experienced church leaders that’s both affordable and accessible to churches and leaders of any size and budget. And, uh, we believe affordability, and accessibility are the keys to building up worship leaders and ministry volunteers wherever and however they might be called.
Barrie Buckner: And finally, I had the honor of speaking with Robb Redman, who serves as the Director of the Institute about the teachers and the topics that we cover.
Robb Redman: The course designers and teachers at the Worship Leader Institute are carefully chosen, not only for their practical experience, but also for their ability to think biblically and theologically about what they do and why they do it, and also they have the ability to communicate effectively what they, uh, their experience and their knowledge for the benefit of others. So these reflective practitioners really are the core of the Worship Leader Institute. We’re delighted to have cadre of seasoned practitioners who are willing to work alongside us to develop the best courses we can offer.
Barrie Buckner: If you want to go beyond the performance and get back to the heart of worship by learning from some of the best minds in worship, visit worshipleaderinstitute.com. That’s www.worshipleaderinstitute.com.
Joshua Swanson: Okay, back to John.
Jon Reddick: All right, so I want to read this scripture from 2 Corinthians. It’s the 12th chapter. It’s, uh, Verse 9 and 10, and I love a lot of different translations. One of my favorite is this English Standard Version. The way they say it, the way they dig in, it says, “But he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ. May rest upon me for the sake of Christ, then I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” Man.
I love how God is almost telling us in the end, there’s actually nothing you can do to escape being human, like you, that’s just the way life is until God comes back for us. Um, but until then, everything that we have, there’s an upside to it, right? So when, if you talk about your emotions, I was talking about shame, which is one of those emotions, and I was talking about the upside of shame.
There’s a downside to shame where if you walk through it in an unhealthy way, it leads to these toxic things, right? Or there’s a downside to, um, hurt. There’s a downside to sadness. You know, sadness can lead you into depression if you’re not careful, or, um, fear can lead you into rage if you’re not careful.
You know, there are all these downsides. But there are these upsides to these things where, where, um, fear can lead you into wisdom or shame can lead you into understanding that yes, you are human, which means you do have flaws, which means, but there is one more perfect. There is one who is perfect, you know, and so there are these upsides to these things that we feel that God gets to redeem.
God is redeeming all of these things and um, and, and we get to keep pointing to him because he is the one that is, um, that is over us all, and he is the one who is loving us through all the, all of these different things.
So those spots, those spots that we feel, whether they’re representing, you know, feelings or mistakes or failures or sins, you know, any of the things that God has already told us are human. Um, God still redeems those things. I think the, I think one of the best things, one of the most, I, I say best, maybe even just beautiful things that we get to do as humans is to lean on Jesus.
I remind, I’m reminded of, we call it the prodigal son, but um, in Hebrew, they call it The Running Father. It’s nothing that it doesn’t matter what the son was doing, there’s nothing that the son can do to gain enough goodness. There’s only what the father does by running to him and giving him his goodness and so in the same way God chases after us with his light, we absorb that goodness and we get to reflect his beauty so the rest of the world can say, oh, what is that? Those people over there have? It’s the beauty that God has given us. You know, it’s the, it’s the goodness that God surrounds us with and so; I’m thankful that we serve a King who is perfect. I’m thankful that we serve a King who is sure of himself, so when we are not, we get to lean on him and we find that sure, solid feeling in him. I’m thankful that we serve a King who knows all about joy, so when we are walking through the hard times, we get to lean on him through hope and find joy through that way, because happiness won’t last us that long, but joy can sustain us because it’s the joy that we find in God with our hope, like leaning on him. So I just wanna encourage anybody and everybody that even hears this, that we serve a God who simply can and will and does.
So I wanna close by encouraging you in saying there will be. That’s human. There will be feelings about the spots that we have; that’s human. But when we zoom out and look to where our light comes from, we realize that God already took those spots to the cross and he’s loving us through every single spot that we will ever have, and he’s using those spots for his glory so that the rest of the world, who also has these individual spots, can be pointed to our God, our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Joshua Swanson: It’s so good to be reminded of the glory and majesty of our Father who can cover over our sin, our shame, our spots with love and reflect glory out into the world.
Thank you, Jon, for your contribution to our podcast. Jon is not only one of the Worship Leaders at Church of the City here in Franklin, Tennessee, but he’s also an artist and a songwriter. His recent song, God Turn It Around, is perfect to button up the concepts covered in this episode of how God uses us in spite of our weaknesses. So we’ll play out the episode with that song.
As always, special thanks to Matt McCartie for producing and editing today’s episode. Jacob Fairclough produced our theme song. The Walk is brought to you by Worship Leader Magazine, which is an Authentic Media brand. I’m Joshua Swanson. Here’s God Turn It Around.
