God loves to surprise us. Try, just try to constrain Him, and He’ll surprise you; He’ll break out like a jack-in-a-box. I think it’s good to imitate our creator in this way and break out of our self-imposed restraints, as well as others’ expectations.
I remember a workshop I attended on speaking to groups about God, by Steve Bush. He said one of his keys to getting the message across was the element of surprise- in his messages, he thinks of what everyone expects him to say on a given subject, and then figure out a way to say the opposite. For example, if you’re speaking in church about sex, people expect you to say something frumpy like, “Sex is bad. Your desires are evil.” So you come out saying that “Sex is good. It’s good that you want to have sex.”
It’s important to have this element of surprise, of actively looking for ways to go against expectations, in our lives. And right now I want to focus on how this works in music – specifically leading times of musical worship.
One Fell Swoop 