Lessons At the Organ

I play the organ for church every week, and, let me tell you, it is one of the things I look forward to most each weekend. I practice on Saturday and Sunday morning (some during the week too if I get time in for it), and on Sunday around noon I will head off to church and start practicing immediately upon arrival, playing/practicing until church starts at 1:30 in the afternoon. When I started playing the organ for church in April 2013, I had tinkered around on a organ about once, twice at the very most, in my life; however, I've played piano since I was six. So I wound up teaching myself the organ, and I learned some new hymns--a feat in itself because, even playing piano for another church before this, I had never played straight out of the hymnal (I could not sight-read for the life of me!).
I learned more than just playing the organ. Yeah, I've learned how to play the foot pedals and how to use the knobs on the organ to get the sound that I want for a given song... But, more importantly, I've learned that the Lord can use you in any capacity. I have learned that we can be strengthened in our weaknesses.
Proverbs 16:3 says, "Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established." In other words, all we have to do to have success is commit our doings to God. What we do in life should be for His glory, not for our own gain.
But what if we don't feel capable of the task? That's where the following words of the Lord come in: "...My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me" (2 Corinthians 12:9). And also: "...if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them" (Ether 12:27).
A few weeks ago, we had an Area Seventy* visit my ward. At the conclusion of the church service, he got up and changed the closing hymn on the spot to "I Know That My Redeemer Lives"--what I would consider to easily be in the top 5 hardest hymns in the hymnal, and of those, the one that I had played the least (I had only played it once in my life on the piano and that's it). That hymn is deceptively difficult! I panicked at first, and then I breathed a silent prayer and got to playing. I thought it turned out horrible, but I was thankful to have gotten through it at all and recognized that the only reason I was able to pull that off was because the Lord was guiding my fingers to the keys and was giving me the calm I needed to not panic the entire time.
Moral of the story: with the Lord's help and sheer determination, you can do anything. :)

P.S. Here's one of my favorite hymns, performed by the amazing Mormon Tabernacle and the Orchestra at Temple Square. Enjoy! :)

 

 

*I am terrible at giving definitions when it comes to church government structure (for lack of better words), so just click on the hyperlink, and you'll be able to see a good definition.