This post goes out to all those who smiled knowingly when reading the title of this post.
There are very few jobs like it, where doing your job well means you go unnoticed, and yet you can make or break a service with a few quick actions.

I’ve been involved in church sound for as long as I can remember, even as a kid in children’s church I often hung out in the little sound booth.
But I think it was about 8 years ago when I got my real start, my family moved to Wheaton and we started helping out in this old church with a small faithful attendance.
Over the years I slowly learned more and more, started to develop a ear for problems, and eventually learned how to fix them. I’ve found this is a very continual thing, I’m learning new things all the time(the latest being the beauty of compressors).
And what’s very cool is now with technology like the iPhone you can have access to tools like a real time analyzer, that before was limited to sound departments with big budgets.
Which is amazing seeing a real time picture of what frequencies are louder than others.

But here’s something interesting, great tools don’t equal great sound, nothing but the listening ears of a experienced sound man can hear the ring in the system and fix the problem long before it even gets close to feeding back, and yet your average church is full of these problems.
I don’t really have a answer to solve this problem, this is mostly just a observation.

Back to my title I know I said it’s pretty much a invisible job when does right, which it is, here’s where the incredible comes in, it’s in that moment when the song is in full swing and the people are entering in, you feel the moment happening and you ride the right faders, EQs, and settings, swelling in key instruments and tones at the right time, the room is just full of that sweet beautiful sound of a great moment in a good mix, and the intensity of the peoples expression of worship rises up with it. And you just can’t help but smile and think, I’m so glad I am doing this right here and right now.

Life is a interesting thing. Sometimes you think you have a grasp on the events and situations you live in around and through. And other times, you’re stuck, clueless about where to go and what to do next.
Right now it’s one of those other times, I’m stuck, sitting here eating a bowl of something from my parents kitchen, in my room in the upstairs of my parents house. in which I live, work and sleep, rent free. Which besides being very generous of them, is a good thing, because my bank account currently balances to a negative number, and this is after only one month of reduced pay from my biggest source of income.

Really gets a guy to start thinking, when he realizes that the minor purchase he made tonight doesn’t already have a set income coming to pay for it when the credit card bill comes due. Yes I do have a tiny bit of savings, that will cover essential bills for a few months. But what about after that? Can I rely on the extremely unsteady source of income that comes from my other design jobs? Or do I go out and start applying for jobs? Like conventional wisdom would say to do. And if I do get a job, working standard hours, for standard pay. What will I be accomplishing, will that answer all the questions? Or will it just raise a whole new set of questions?

These are questions I am facing, and I get the feeling a whole lot of people have similar questions.

So what am I going to do? Well, God has told me(in my journal during conversations with Him), “son, don’t worry, trust Me, I’m taking care of you, come spend time with Me, I have so much for you, I have all the answers to everything you’re facing now, and will face in the future.” And you know what, I do trust Him. Do I have all the answers right now? No I don’t. But I’ve come to realize something, I don’t have to know all the answers to all the questions. I just have to know and trust that my heavenly father is a good dad, and you know what a good dad does? He takes care of his son, and he helps guide his son through life.

Now if you think that sounds extremely irresponsible and naive. You my friend are looking at this situation through worldly eyes. Take a look from God’s perspective, and you’ll see that my purpose here on earth is to love my Father, and follow the perfect plan that He laid out for me, and by doing this, this is the only way I will meet all the people He wants me to meet, influence who He wants me to influence. Resulting in literally saving the life of many, giving purpose to others, and leaving His finger print on the world around me. All this is only possible when you’re living a life firmly set on following the Father, no matter what the world around you says.

So what’re my next steps? Well, I’m going to go get some sleep, wake up tomorrow, and chat with my Dad all through the day, following His direction as I eat, as I fix my car, as I interact with others. Work/sleep/eat/play, every movement can be led, all I have to do is keep my mind quiet, my heart open, and listen.

Recently i got a great deal on a acoustic guitar. This is a guitar i had been looking at for a few months and had been saving up money in preparation to get it. So when i found someone selling one that was only five months old at a very fair price. i jumped at it.
So when it arrived a couple days later via UPS, and had this crack in the side:

You might imagine I was a little disappointed. But in reality I wasn’t, after a quick look over and squeezing the cracks together I realized with a bit of glue, and a little pressure, it would be completely fixed.
So I did just that:

A hour later and you can’t even tell there was ever a problem:

Now a couple days later I was thinking about this situation, and the various ways people might react to it. And there’s everything from feeling really down because your new guitar is broken. To being steaming mad looking for the person to blame for this injustice that was done to you.
So what made it no problem for me?
I thought about this for a minute and realized it was past experience.  I know from past experience that things get damaged in shipping all the time, so no need to get mad at the guy who sold it to me.  Then from the experience of all the years I’ve spent doing projects here and there with wood and other various materials, and working on things, restoring guitars, in general figuring out ways of solving many problems that come up in the process.
Which taught me to look at a problem with a simple goal of finding a solution. So that’s what I did.  And it worked perfectly, the guitar sounds great, problem solved within a couple hours of the guitar arriving.

So lets apply this to life in general.  We all experience many things in our lives, often we think very little of these things, and only do whatever we need to in order to get it done.  But what if the life experiences are something else, instead of isolated events, what if they’re more like ‘on the job training’ where today is what prepares you for tomorrow.
And it all adds up, so that as you face all the various problems that come up in life, you can handle it, without problem.

This also applies in our faith, and relationship with God.  What if every day the time you spend just hanging out with God, growing closer, and learning from Him, is actually incredibly vital. And it’s those everyday moments that prepare you for the problems and situations you’ll face in the future.  Where the problem will come up, and instead of reacting negatively, you can just look at the problem, draw from your experience with God, and be able to say “that’s no problem,” fix it, and continue with life.

Makes those little times with God seem much more vital and important doesn’t it?

Something to think about.