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There are many people in this world who arise and fall from the public scene. There are also many people who have brief moments in time where they take up an icon or symbol by which they express themselves to the world. Such is the story of Brother Trumpet. The story of Brother Trumpet started while he was a child. As a child, he experienced hardship due to a terminal disease, cancer. Consequently, he not only wrestled with God, but he also desired to thank God for keeping him alive year after year. On one of his out-of-town hospital visits, there was a man who went to the outpatient clinic and presented several of the instruments he played; amongst them was the trumpet. The child liked the look and sound that the trumpet presented. Consequently, he convinced himself that he would one day learn to thank God through the trumpet.
Additionally, this child had some audible influence from a trumpet player from within his old church. Once he entered middle school, his parents helped him get into band. It was at this time that he learned to play the cornet, which is within the trumpet family. In inadvertently, the lungs and heart were getting stronger and the brain was receiving better circulation and oxygen flow. This action improved Brother Trumpet’s health. Nonetheless, he was not very good at playing the trumpet at school, in particular because he really wanted to play the trumpet for God and not for man; this made it a tough challenge for him. Additionally, as a teenager, he went on to play the trumpet throughout his high school years. He got better at it, but also learned to play a little at church. As he entered his college years, he eventually saved up enough money to buy his own trumpet. It was a basic one, yet it served its purpose. He mostly played at home and sometimes at church. It was not until he turned twenty-one and moved to an out-of-town university, that he learned how to play the trumpet “in spirit and in truth”. He learned a lot throughout the summer of 1997. His main teacher was a man who had received distinguished recognition at the state level while he was in high school. This man also taught him how to seek God through both praise and worship as well as with an attitude of sincerity and humility through the trumpet. All of this can only be done through the Spirit of God. It was within this same summer that this young man also made a commitment to receive Christ Jesus into his heart and make Him Lord over his life and the playing of the trumpet. When this young man returned back to his hometown, he went back to play his trumpet at the old church. Although there were few “believers” who played instruments, there was something more that this young man needed and was seeking. Hence, he went on to look for another church, and was quick to incorporate himself with some ministries, including a praise and worship team. Within a few months, he began to acknowledge again that on his own abilities, he was a poor trumpet player. However, he turned to God for help and began a new ritual. His ritual was to pray before playing in front of a church congregation. Right before the praise and worship portion of the service would commence, he would pray something like this:
Such was the uttered prayer of this young man. However, it was not until a visiting minister came into the present church that he acquired the call name and entity of Brother Trumpet. This minister created nicknames for many people. Yet, with Brother Trumpet, God provided this minister with a word of knowledge and he prayed over him. After that day, Brother Trumpet began to change. Not so much in character, but as to what would happen when he played the trumpet. Among those things were: the feeling of a hand on his back as he played, arms being pulled down by evil forces, witnessing with his eyes a spiritual battle occur in the spiritual realm, uplifted spirits of the congregation, spiritual warfare through the course of praise songs, and a testimony from a music minister: he saw fire come out of the trumpet as it was played! For several years, Brother Trumpet was alive and well. He was one of the few church musicians who played at multiple services. On Sundays, he used to play for an early Spanish Service. He would then go off to Sunday School, then go play for the morning service. Then in the evening, after having worked in the afternoon, he would rush to church and play some more. Additionally, he would also both attend and play at a Spanish Praise and Worship Service during the week; these were his most enjoyable services. As time passed by, Brother Trumpet was growing spiritually and so were his interests in God’s Word, as well as other ministries. He would sometimes help out with ministries with adolescents, young and emerging adults, men, special evangelistic events, but above all, he would enjoy doing on-call missionary work with a family that would do work with people in Mexico. A time came when things changed at the church. Brother Trumpet foresaw some of these changes. Hence, before many of the changes came to pass, he went off to start attending another church. He left a letter of notice at the prior church and sadly enough, no one attempted to neither discuss it nor sway him to stay. It was almost as they had used him as long as they could. Although this grieved Brother Trumpet for a while, he still had some desires to play in a praise and worship team at this new church. However, the “director” of the group was too set in his way, that Brother Trumpet never truly received the opportunity to audition for the team. Eventually, an opportunity arose, but the director turned him down without even a chance for him to present himself. Several years passed by and the “director” presented the opportunity for auditions; Brother Trumpet turned it down. Although he still liked music and song, the things that he had witnessed grieved his spirit. There were hardly any believers who would worship God “in spirit and in truth” as is instructed in the Bible. It was all becoming a show for entertaining, catering, and coordinating the sentiment of being connected to God as oppose to escorting people to the presence of God. As time passed by, Brother Trumpet began to die. People no longer heard the fire that came from his trumpet. In fact, his entity as Brother Trumpet was seldom spoken off at churches. Brother Trumpet had witnessed the control that pride, envy, and the flesh had upon people who held such positions. In fact, he too would get caught up with pride from the praise that he would receive from those congregants who expressed how they enjoyed his playing. It all became a virus that entered his body and poisoned it. Although Brother Trumpet did die a silent death, a small part of him always remained alive. There are still many people that were blessed by his playing and still remember him by it. But it grieves him that amongst those people, they usually only remember him for that reason; they forgot everything else he did in service to God. Outside of the entity of Brother Trumpet, this young man was active in service to God. He devoted some of his time to one-on-one evangelism with both adolescents and young adults. However, most of his spiritual devotion was given to doing personal Bible studies; some of which got profound. Consequently, he mostly limited his trumpet playing to his household and both praise and worship music to express his inner most sentiments to God. He tried to leave the trumpet all together. However, God made it a part of him. Even though this young man learned to play the guitar on his own, God would not allow him to abandon the trumpet. It is now an extension of his expressed heart and spirit sentiments to God. Although Brother Trumpet has faded away from the church, he still remains true to God. He has now taken to reading and writing over the impressions and lessons that God has introduced into his life. He publishes them online and shares them with friends and brethren in Christ. He has also been doing comparative studies in the area of Biblical counseling and Integrated Faith-Based counseling. Additionally, he spends much of his time studying and striving to uphold those things that are true and with certainty. Although this choice of life has been a challenge for him, he knows in his heart that he is not alone and that a reward lies in heaven for his commitment and obedience to Christ Jesus. In closing, Brother Trumpet was a young man who arose from tough origins. He was uplifted by God and was brought down by blinded sin from within the church. Even though the entity of Brother Trumpet is now dead, he still remains strengthen by Christ and serving Him through diverse facets of life as the Spirit of the Living God impresses upon him to do so. - - - UPDATE November 17, 2012 It has been several months since I have played the trumpet. Yet, I have embraced the acoustic guitar as my secondary instrument of praise and worship. I have primarily used it for private usage with God and to express my sentiments. Additionally, I have used it to share music with my more talented relatives. I have had hope for playing the guitar with small groups, but God has yet to make His voice known to me in regards to this matter. Nevertheless, although I miss playing the trumpet, I leave it up to God on its return, for it was always intended for Him, not mankind. UPDATE February 20, 2018 I don't recall having played the trumpet in 2017, but once in the Fall season. I realized that my lips still remembered how to play, but my abdominal diaphragm is no longer there to sustain any notes. I will still keep the trumpet, but not play it any more. I will probably stick to playing my small Ram's Horn on special occasions. Comments are closed.
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