So on Sunday night Caleb said to me that he wanted to lead a song.

This is no surprise.

First of all Caleb adores attention and getting up in front of a crowd of people, with all eyes on him, is right up his alley.

So we led Jesus Loves Me together and is was just as precious as you can imagine.

I told him later that it makes God smile to hear His children singing songs to Him.

I didn’t even ask Jack if he wanted to lead one, because I know Jack: He’s painfully shy. But on this occasion he wanted to lead one as well. He was scared and very nervous but he wanted to do it. He wanted to lead one of the first songs he ever learned, “This World is Not my Home.” So I jogged back up to the front but when I turned around he was still in his seat. I called for him to join me, but fear took over and he put his head in his hands.

Fine. No problem. I led the song by myself.

But of course Jack is also very tender hearted and he was very upset with himself that he didn’t lead the song, and he was upset that a “big deal” was made of it, only for him not to lead.

So what I told him was that God was so happy at what he did. Even though he didn’t lead the song, he wanted to. His heart was given to God even if his legs lost their strength.

There are a lot of people who sing songs every Sunday and Wednesday, but their heart isn’t in it. They sing because they’re supposed to. It’s a ritual.

Those songs bounce off the walls but don’t do much else. But when we put our heart into it, those songs blast through the ceiling and enter the ears of a smiling God. We may not sing great, and we may not sing loud and we may be nine years old and still learning what all of this means, but if we put our heart into what we do, we are well on our way (not all the way, but on the way) to giving God the worship He wants.