This is the story of a man who has incredibly impacted my life in so many ways.
Nick Blaylock: An aspiring young twenty-something, always trusting God for direction in his life. Nick has a "unique" sense of fashion with his v-necks, capris, and gray floral toms. If you saw this character walking down the street, he would most likely be smiling and singing a random song as loud as he could. Whether or not this is true today, I can only guess, because of the simple fact that almost a year ago, we both went our separate ways according to God's plan for our lives.
Let's start of the story with a little background. When I was thirteen years old, I joined the youth worship team at my church. Young and ambitious, I felt like I could take on the whole world of worship with one hand. Although I didn't understand anything about it until later.
A year later, the worship leader at the time moved on to a bigger call in his life and we received the gift of a new singer. *Nick Blaylock enters the scene*
Nick was the drummer for the main service on Sundays, but the pastoral team decided that he would be a great worship leader for the youth. And boy, did he lead worship. I remember the first day he walked into our small youth room. Sporting his deep blue v-neck, he jumped onto the stage and picked up my guitar. "Wow. I want to buy myself one of these!" he said. That made quite an interesting first impression on me. But little did I know that this stranger would dramatically change my life.
Whenever Nick would lead worship, you could feel his intense passion for God radiating off his spirit. There was so much excitement in his personality. That combined with his understanding of God's Word, he became the worship leader that we all admired. We had never seen such raw passion before. With time, his genuine love for worship was transferred into all of our hearts.
One Friday night in the middle of summer, Nick, myself, the drummer, and the bassist, all went to McDonald's at midnight. The bass player brought a gorilla mask and told me to run inside with it. I had a whole costume on. Along with the monkey mask, I had baggy jeans, boots that were five sizes too big for me, a black jacket, sunglasses, and a black beanie on top. The plan was, I walk inside and wait for the rest of the guys to go through the drive thru. Well, I went inside and long story short, the employees at the registers thought I was going to rob them. *awkward moment*
We had plenty of good times like that. But as we all know, with good times, there's gotta be some rough times too.
When you hang out with people so much, you tend to see their good days alongside their bad days. I won't ever forget the night that we completely bombed the song "Beautiful" by Phil Wickham. Nick ended up venting out his pent up frustration on me. Later, he apologized for not controlling his feelings. That taught me a quick lesson. Never wear your emotions on your sleeve; if you do, be transparent and ask for forgiveness.
Nick would always spend quality time with us talking about the purpose of worship. Anywhere from one-on-one to
getting together with the whole team. He spent a lot of time investing
into me personally. I appreciate this so much now, although I didn't
quite understand it all then.
After only a short year of leading worship, Nick started his college education. But college = money. money = job. job = less free time. So Nick started handing me the reigns to leading worship. One service, he intentionally didn't show up and told me to lead worship. So I texted him five times asking him what I needed to do. He never replied, but instead, waited till the next week to tell me that, "Heat and pressure makes diamonds."
Before we knew it, Nick was gone, and I was left with a worship team. At fourteen years old, I was leading worship single handed. Am I bragging? Absolutely not.
You can't expect a fourteen year old to understand the art of leading worship like someone who's twenty. It just won't work. I completely forgot almost everything that I was taught, and basically offended everyone on the worship team. Way to go, Zeb. Really smooth. We became stagnant, less potent, even lazy in our worship. It gradually took me up until now for God to give me understanding of what worship was all about. But something incredible happened recently that shook the foundations of what I was doing.
Nick Blaylock showed up at my door about a month ago and came into my room to talk with me. He told me some things that I had heard from him time and time before. But this time, he reminded me of the simple fact that I simply couldn't believe I forgot.
"Whatever you do, always remember two things. First, love God with everything you have. Second, love people more than yourself. If you do this, you can't go wrong."
In conclusion, you will have to remember this sooner or later. You might be in a place right now where you don't have to make a choice of focusing on God. But one way or another, you'll face a brick wall that can only come down with the right motives.
“If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere.”
-Frank A. Clark
