Metronomes get a bad rap.
Many, if not all, musicians hate practicing with a metronome. The relentless ticking annoys and pesters, and the unforgiving tempo points out all the passages that are still not up to speed. Most teachers still insist that their students use one. The metronome not only helps you know what tempo to take, but it discourages you from pausing to go back and fix the note you just played wrong, or from slowing down to try and get all those pesky notes in before the next beat.
These are good things when you’re practicing alone, and even more so when you play with a bunch of people at the same time. Some larger churches I attended used a “click track” - a recorded metronome beat - to keep us all together, even during services (using earbuds), as the musicians were so spread out that we couldn’t hear each other well.
A metronome is a tool for musical discipline. Practicing your scales with a metronome is painful, but yields beautiful skill. Practicing a piece with a metronome can be boring, tiring, frustrating, and uninspiring, but pursuing this discipline time after time allows you to eventually play it effortlessly, not to mention correctly. The steady beat becomes ingrained into your thoughts, and intertwined with the music itself. You begin to feel the piece at that tempo and the rhythms are secure, so you can then focus on expression and meaning and beauty. It feels right and natural.
Isn’t that what we want to feel in our pursuit of an authentic Christian life? To have God’s word ingrained into our thoughts, and to feel secure in our knowledge of Christ? Then we need to pursue discipline in our spiritual life as well.
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.
1 Corinthians 9:24-27