And God said, “Rock out!”
Monday night worship: what can I say other than that the Holy Spirit showed up! For the past two days we had been worshiping with some great artists, the Jonathan David Helser band. But there was something different about tonight.
I felt an eagerness to worship as I approached the pavilion, and upon arriving I slipped into my little “comfort zone” about two-thirds of the way from the band to the back of the room. There weren’t any different worship songs that we hadn’t sung before or anything. But as I stood there singing and maybe throwing some hands up, I just couldn’t help but want to move closer up front. (Not that there’s anything more “magical” about moving up front. I think I just wanted MORE worship and the physical response was to move up and not hang back in the comfort zone, that’s all.)
So I moved about half way up and kept worshiping, rocking out a little harder, jumping up and down just a little bit but not too much. And I still wanted to move up! And because I wanted to move up, I did! And the worship got a little crazier. Those who wanted to move up, moved up, and those who wanted to move back, moved back.
Finally I wanted to worship more and more and jump around like an idiot, and a lot of other people just wanted to jump around like an idiot in more and more worship, so guess what? We did! We jumped around like our pants were on fire and sang and shouted so loud that we could have made the deaf hear. And it was a blast! There was such a Spirit of freedom and jubilee among us that one could find even the most reserved of the group (ahem, ME) up in the air half the time.
I call that the Holy Spirit. There weren’t strange lights floating around or ghostly fogs or anything supernatural like that, but what was supernatural was that a reserved, conservative, southern baptist boy like me would end up bouncing up and down at the front of the group like a charismatic with a sugar rush on a trampoline!
Take a gander at this video made by the talented Daniel Durick:
(http://danieldurick.theworldrace.org/?filename=world-race-training-camp-1)
Now before this night I wished that someone would have explained to me just what exactly was going on with those crazy charismatic jumping dingbats. So now that I have experienced crazy-charismatic-jumping-dingbatness, let me explain to you just what went on with me.
Previously, I didn’t know what to think about them. I didn’t know if they had lost all conscious control and were under the influence of the holy spirit or if they were just showing off or that was just their personality or what. I’m sure that sometime you can find people who fall into each of those categories. I did not fall into any of them that night. The most accurate way that I can describe it is a freedom from inhibitions, a lack of insecurity, and an eagerness to worship.
You see, usually during worship I always secretly wanted to be one of those crazy dingbats, but there was always some sort of wall by which the most I tried to express myself during worship, the more insecure I’d feel about what the people around me would think. That and my inhibitions would creep up and inform me that because no one else was doing it that I couldn’t do it.
But that night I just didn’t care. I had an eagerness to worship (as usual) but the inhibitions weren’t there, and I could have cared less about what other people thought. I had complete conscious control and felt completely free to do whatever I wanted. I could have walked back to my tent and gone to sleep, or just as easily moved up to the front and jump around dancing and getting my socks rocked off. I simply chose the latter because it’s what I wanted to do, and there were no inhibitions to insecurities to keep me from doing it. So that’s how I describe it: Freedom. To do whatever. And Joy, to worship with all my self. No inhibitions, nothing holding me back.
Thank you Holy Spirit! You are a spirit of freedom and joy!
