When I was at university this past year, I had the privilege of being inspired, taught and guided under the wing of Dan Wilt M.Min, an honourable child of God, who teaches through the abundance of his experiences as an International Worship/ Creative leader. It was definitely one of the better years of my life.
Something Dan would do at the beginning of every class we had with him was light a candle and recite a phrase, "Lord, as I light this candle we recognize that You are completely devoted to us and we say in response that we are completely devoted to You." We would then follow with a prayer and sometimes worship and then go on with the teaching time. I really enjoyed this action and I began doing it on my own. When I got up in the morning or before I started writing a paper, and also at the beginning of my quiet times. I found it helped to centre me, bring my thoughts to One focus; a stillness before my Maker.
When I came home for the summer and began leading worship for our youth again, I had a sense to include this symbolic action at the beginning of our worship time. In doing this I noticed a great calm that would wash over the kids. I haven't had to fight for their attention as much to begin the worship and one of them usually asks if they can light the candle. It seems it has given them something to focus on and opens a space for them to worship Jesus.
Below I have included a link to a YouTube clip of Dan explaining in more detail why this simple action can be useful in our personal times of daily devotion. He'll explain it much better than I ever could. It's about 6mins and worth a watch.
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