I wrote yesterday about the importance of a dual focus: the Word AND the Spirit. It’s fitting that we publish this today. It’s Star Wars Day: “May the Fourth be with you!”

If you’re not a Star Wars fan, I’m sorry, but there’s a lesson in thinking about the power (the Force) that was an essential element in the Star Wars stories. Power should be an essential element of our stories too:

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1.8, ESV)

OK, back to the Word AND Spirit theme. Here’s a lesson from the world of music. You may know that I’ve played piano all my life, and my wife, June, taught piano as a second career. She is very big on “musicality” – something that is sometimes lost even among today’s concert artists who seem to be playing faster and faster…because they can.

At any rate, there’s a difference between playing all the notes correctly and making music. A few years ago, my son-in-law, a high school band director, was short some players and asked me to sit in with my trumpet. He was desperate because he and I know that I’m not very good on trumpet, especially in a band setting (I’m self-taught and don’t have a lot of band experience). I sat next to another high school band director, a drummer by training, who was filling in on trumpet. He played every note, exactly on time, exactly on pitch, but also all notes at the same deafening volume. It sounded like a jack-hammer. I shouldn’t criticize because he could at least play the notes, but it wasn’t musical.

It reminded me of something Seth Godin wrote about his clarinet experience:

Starting at the age of nine, I played the clarinet for eight years. Actually, that’s not true. I took clarinet lessons for eight years when I was a kid, but I’m not sure I ever actually played it.

Eventually, I heard a symphony orchestra member play a clarinet solo. It began with a sustained middle C, and I am 100% certain that never once did I play a note that sounded even close to the way his sounded.

And yet…And yet the lessons I was given were all about fingerings and songs and techniques. They were about playing higher or lower or longer notes, or playing more complex rhythms. At no point did someone sit me down and say, “wait, none of this matters if you can’t play a single note that actually sounds good.” – Seth Godin, March 2014

It’s the word AND the spirit. You can’t play the clarinet without fingerings and songs and techniques…or complex rhythms (the Word), but you also need musicality (the Spirit).

I wrote about this just over a year ago using the analogy of paint-by-number versus real art. It’s the same principle.

We need Spirit-empowered, Word-directed life and ministry. Jesus knew that:

And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. (John 20.22, ESV)

Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” (Luke 24.45 – 49, ESV, emphasis mine)