A prophetic rhema word regarding “flesh” in worship music

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On 11/17/2020 at 6 pm while listening to worship music during drumming on my practice pad while cycling at the same time, the Lord said: “You have heard it said that you cannot perfect in the flesh what was begun in the Spirit.”  Yes, I remember Paul saying that, so I looked it up later in Galatians 3:3-5 where Paul was criticizing the Jewish-Christians for going back to obeying the Mosaic Law to be “more right” with God, saying:  “Are you so foolish?  Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh . . . Does He who supplied the Spirit to you and/coupled works miracles among you do so by works of the Torah Law of conditional-favor or by hearing with trusting-relying-faith?”  Yes, Paul, Jesus, and others refer to following the OT Law as “by the flesh” – see Identity.  That’s religion!

Well, what the Lord reminded me of while listening to so many bands playing worship music is that most of it simply is not anointed, even if it sounds good musically!  As Christians they have “begun in the Spirit” – and in some cases their song was originally anointed – but now their performance is “by the flesh” as they try so hard with all their “might and power” external resources and internal ability to epiteleo “bring it to completion, accomplish it, perfect it.”  Man, I’ve seen this a 1000 times in 15 worship bands over 40 years!  They really believe they can bring their “external-resource” thousand-dollar (even million-dollar) sound, lighting, and musical gear, and all their “internal-ability” skill to put on an amazing worship experience for their church or for God.  They may say something else, but their actions betray their words!  That’s the burden I’ve carried for so long that birthed SpiritMusicMeetups.org.  We desperately need to surrender our control by “letting go and letting God.”

Well the next thing God said to me really blew me away because I’ve never heard this:  “What you haven’t heard before that is equally true is that you cannot perfect by the Spirit what is begun by the flesh.”  Wow!  So you can’t “accomplish, finish, or perfect” by the means of the Spirit the things that were started by the means of human “might and power.”  Yikes!

After pondering this for a while, I remembered some ‘on-fire’ Christians who once as unsaved men played “dark metal.”  So, they took almost the same songs they knew so well, the same chord progressions, the same licks, the same drumming and decided they would play it for God.  It sounded nearly the same but if you could actually hear the lyrics you would find they were talking about God and “Christian things” instead of Satan and “demonic things.”  They went nowhere because it just wasn’t anointed!  There were also very popular Christian singers/bands that simply weren’t anointed after a while, so they crossed over to secular music, got divorced, etc.  There are a ton of Christian songs out there, but few do very little to bring you into the presence of God.  That’s because, although done with good intentions for God, they are still “by the flesh.”  Then there are songs like Dara Maclean’s “Yours Forever” that seem to be anointed every time you play it because these songs were made with God – see the Media page.

As Christian musicians, are we trying to keep one foot in a fallen world and one foot in heaven when it comes to our choice of music, especially worship music?  Are we trying to take worldly songs or melodies and give them a Christian “twist?”  Are we trying to make our fleshly songs godly by devoting them to God?  Or will we finally just surrender completely to the Lord and let Him play through us?

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