After speaking at an NFL team chapel, I was invited to join the team for dinner before the game. I ended up sitting with a group that included a winner of the Heisman Trophy, the award given to the best college player in the country. The other players at the table were also some of the best at their positions. I asked all of them how they achieved what they did, and each one related how they started out very young with a devotion to be a professional football player. Then they became focused on a single position. They spent an average of eight hours a day, every day, practicing, lifting weights, and studying others who had been the best at their positions. If they did this for a position on a football team, what would happen if God’s people started having the same kind of devotion for gaining a place on His team?

Some of these players remarked what I have often heard from others: They felt they knew others with more talent than they had, but they wasted their time in entertainment or dreaming about being a great player, instead of working to get there. In short, the successful ones were inevitably the ones who sacrificed the most and had the discipline to train when others did not, even when they did not feel like it.

I have talked with others who were the best in their fields—artists, musicians, business people, people in the military, and people in the ministry, and I always seem to get the same story. Again, what would happen if Christians started seeking their positions in the body of Christ with the same zeal that athletes seek their place on a team? A single congregation, even a small one, with those who are greatly devoted would certainly impact the world for Christ.

What would happen if we spent the same amount of time cleaning up our inner man each day as we did our outer bodies? What would happen if we spent as much time preparing and eating spiritual meals for our inner man as we do for our outer man? Our physical bodies are going to pass away, but who we are spiritually will last forever. To what should we be giving most of our time and attention?

Hunger for God is one of the greatest gifts that we can have. Even the greatest natural talents pale in significance to the least spiritual gift. Only those who really “see” know this and live accordingly. This is why the Apostle Paul prayed for the Ephesians that “the eyes of their hearts would be opened” (see Ephesians 1:18). The eyes of our hearts are our spiritual eyes, and what we see with them should be more real to us than what we see with our natural eyes. What we “see” determines what we give ourselves to and how we live. Seeing is basic to our calling, and learning to see and interpret what we see is basic to our training as well. How we see God determines how we worship Him, and how we see ourselves determines how we worship Him.

What do you see?

Last week, I shared some about Leonard Jones and the blessing he has been to our team. Another great man of God whom I think has had a major impact on worship in our time is Don Potter. When Don and Leonard teamed up, it had an impact on worship around the world that is still reverberating. Let me share some of Don’s story, though I highly recommend reading his book, Facing the Wall, which is one of my favorites.

Don was a well-known recording artist whose hits are still played on some radio stations. His recording of “Over the Rainbow” actually distributed more than Judy Garland’s, and they used Don’s version at the funeral of the writer who composed it. Don was also the lead guitarist and vocalist for Chuck Mangione, one of the great jazz composers and trumpet players. For much of Don’s life, he had been at a pinnacle of success musically. When Don met the Lord, he felt that he was supposed to move to Nashville, but he did not presume that it was to have anything to do with music. In fact, he became a carpenter, spending years using his musical talents to worship the Lord in private. He did not presume that he would ever play publicly again. Even so, playing in his little room, facing a wall, he played his best before the Lord.

He helped a mother and daughter become household names and one of the most successful duos ever in country music—The Judds. Then Don helped Wynonna Judd start her own career. He also became one of the most sought-after studio musicians, to the degree that one top country music singer told me that Don Potter’s playing or influence could be found somewhere on almost every hit that came out of Nashville. Once, when Don and I were looking at a poster with the pictures of a few dozen of the most famous recording artists to come out of Nashville, I asked Don how many of them he had recorded with. He studied the poster and then said, “All but two.”

 I met Don and Christine when Jack Deere and I were speaking at Belmont Church, a famous church in Nashville. The whole church seemed filled with great musicians and some who were famous. Our worship team for the conference was composed of Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, and John Elliott, who were all at the top and have to be considered some of the greatest in our time. John was producing my wife’s first album at the time, and Don felt that he should be a part of it. He donated his studio, played on it, and, like he does with just about every project he is involved with, helped take it to a whole new level. This was an amazing and greatly appreciated blessing, but we were shocked when he wanted to come to our place in Charlotte and lead worship in our little School of the Spirit meetings, which were just getting started. Musically, this was like having the Apostle Paul ask if he could share in your home group.

Don came and God moved. It was obvious that Don and Christine lived for worshiping God. Leonard was in heaven. To his credit, Leonard told me that any time Don came, he would take a backseat. To this day, I have never witnessed jealousy in Leonard, which is very rare with musicians and artists, probably because they have to struggle so hard just to make a living. When they proposed doing the first Worship & Warfare Conference, none of us really knew if it would work, but it worked like nothing else we had experienced at the time. The worship went to such a level that Don resolved to leave Nashville and devote himself to worship full-time. He was at the top of his profession, and we were only able to pay him a tiny fraction of what he was making. He even donated the house he was living in to a ministry when he came.

I often hear people say that they are emptying themselves so that God can fill them, but most of these really don’t have anything to be emptied of. When John the Baptist said that Jesus would increase but he must decrease (see John 3:30), he had something to decrease from—a ministry that all of Judea was coming to. Don left everything many people would do almost anything to attain, with the hope of being part of something that God was building. All of us know that Don and Christine had a huge part in building MorningStar, but more than that, they began a fresh wave of worship that continues to touch many around the world.  

To me, Don and Christine are heroes of the faith, and though I expect them to yet contribute much more, they are just two that we have been blessed with in these times. Some of the greatest missionaries, pastors, teachers, and evangelists are alive right now. There are prophets that have had a great impact on the times and others who are being raised up who will no doubt walk in some of the most amazing prophetic authority ever. Why can’t you be one of them? If you seek, you will find.

We are all as close to God today as we want to be. How much do you want Him?