This blog post is mostly stuff that I wrote as a personal
email to someone I love but is something that I have been feeling the Lord is
leading me to share with a larger audience now. It’s something that I am truly excited about in my life
right now.
Over the course of the first month in Romania, I started
leading worship more and more and more.
I have always absolutely loved worship time but God was just taking me
to a whole new level in worship. I
started singing in a way that seriously I had no idea I could sing in and God
started speaking through me during worship and giving me new songs and stuff
right in the middle of a worship time.
Seriously, I shouldn’t skim over this because it’s one the most exciting
thing that has happened to me so far on the race. I feel like God is just running with me closer and closer to
His own heart through worship and I LOVE IT.
I also really love seeing people enter into worship. I love it when I can look out into the
group of people worshipping and God will give me some kind of awareness of what
is going on inside of them at the moment.
Then this helps me to pray for them, lead worship in a way that is
beneficial, and helps me draw close to God in a way that enables all of us to
be heading the same direction.
It’s super sweet and has just been a huge blessing so far for me.
A couple weeks ago, I started feeling weird about the
positive affirmation that people would give me about the worship times that I
would lead. I started getting
scared that some kind of pride was going to creep in and that I was going to
start thinking of myself as some awesome worship leader or something. I got really scared of this and started
having anyone and everyone I could find on my team and on my squad pray for me
against pride. I just really didn’t
want it in my life but I had some kind of irrational fear that it was just
going to show up and I wasn’t going to be able to get rid of it. Kind of a stupid fear but it was there
either way.
When our squad was all together between Romania and Moldova,
God put it on one of our squad leaders’ hearts to have me lead our squad
worship time. I was definitely a
little nervous because even though I had been leading for our two teams in
Tirgu Mures for the month, I knew that we had other people with guitar and
singing gifts on our squad and I was just worried about playing in front of
that many people and singing in front of that many people. I wasn’t necessarily scared to get up
there in front of people though. I
was more scared that I was going to get up there and everything inside of me
would think that I needed to “perform” or something.
Anyways, I went up to lead worship and right off the bat, I
just decided to tell everyone that I was a little nervous and that I really
just didn’t want there to be any spirit of performance over me but that I just
wanted to be worshipping God. If
they wanted to join me, that would be delicious. So I had everyone pray for me real quickly against a spirit
of performance and, as the root of that, against pride or wanting to receive
glory if I did well.
OK so, as everyone was praying for me real quickly and as I
was praying for myself in that time, God just spoke so clearly to me one
thing. He said “hey guess
what? It doesn’t matter how well
or how poorly you perform. I [the
holy spirit] am the one who makes this a party.”
It was so freeing!!
I realized that I had started believing a lie that it was anything other
than God’s love, presence, and joy that was making our worship times
meaningful. God wasn’t moving in
people’s hearts during worship because I had started getting better at singing
and playing! He was moving because
He loves to love on us and loves to spend time with us when we worship. My only role as a leader in worship is
just to be an honest worshipper and truly seek intimacy with Him. I just get to follow His leading at
every turn.
Super awesome.
I know it seems elementary but sometimes you just need to hear stuff
from God a couple times before it’s real.
This was one of those things for me. We ended up having a SICK AWESOME time with Jesus as a
squad. I think we worshipped for
over two and a half hours that night!! (I will be honest, my fingers were DEAD
after playing that long haha). But
it was really good and the revelation that He gave me that night made it so
easy to just take every compliment from people about the worship time and just
lay it down at Jesus’ feet as thanks for Him showing up.
OK so that was long.
Haha but the point of what I realized is that God showed me how much
more powerful His presence is than my presence. He showed me that the only reason that worship time is
awesome and that when two or three gather to worship, it is powerful, is that
HE is there and HIS PRESENCE is in it.
Without His presence, these things would be dead.
God has continued to work in me through worship and this
past weekend, He blessed me so much.
We went back to the capital of Moldova (Chisinau) to meet up with
U-Squad who is going into their last month of ministry!! It was such an awesome time with them
even though it was pretty short.
God used a few of them to speak some stuff over me related to worship
that was just soo soo soo good. I
love what God said to me through them.
I got a chance to worship with them and to lead some worship time for
both of our squads as a part of our worship time together and oh man…I just
don’t even know how to explain how rich the father’s love for me became that
night. It was just a new level of
being loved and being a son of God.
Awesome.
I am a worshipper!
It’s just part of who I am and I am loving digging into that part of my
God-given identity. I’m excited to
see worship take over every area of my life.
You should try digging into worship. Find some good worship music and just
soak in it for a while and ask Jesus to move in you as you tell Him how great
and good He is! CHOOSE to dig in
the next time that you’re in a corporate worship time!!
I know that there is always a deeper place that we can go to
with the Lord through worship. He
is an unending ocean. No matter
how deep you are with Him, you can ALWAYS go deeper into his love, his goodness,
and his grace. Fight for that
deeper place.
Love you guys!
