The words came across the screen:
“Take me out to the middle of the river, I want to drown in the good ol’ river of your love. Take me out to the middle of the river, I want to drown in the good ol’ river of your love.
I want to drown in the river; I want to drown in the river. Of your love.”
I raised my hands up to The Lord and just started weeping.
Training camp was an eye opener for me. I truly found what it means to worship our Father.
Worship for me, as I learned it, was singing in my little box, chained down by what people think of me, not raising my hands, not dancing, or anything like that. I always thought that is for others and not for me, but my heart always longed for a deeper kind of passion.
See what I knew about worship was wrong. Dancing, jumping, and raising our hands was weird. So, I thought. Consequently, the longing for that passion of abandonment from what I knew was kind of shoved down, but deep down I know there was more to God then what I had seen or heard about.
The band started at the beginning of the week by telling us that are free to worship however you would like. Whether its kneeing before Him, raising your hands, dancing around, or whatever your lead to do.
I found myself in a place where it was really hard to worship at first because all of my surroundings were new, when it comes to worship. It wasn’t crazy or anything. Just people passionately worshiper our Creator in different ways that I was not use to.
Worship might look different for many people, and we must find a way to worship Him however that is. Worship is not just with songs or with music, but it is giving Him praise in all that we do.
Yes in most cases worship is accompanied with music and a written song, but it can’t stop there. The mere fact that out hearts burst for His love; is worship.
When you’re asked to put yourself in the orphans shoes to imagine what it might feel like to be them, and to find out they don’t dream like you and I. Their dreams don’t consist of becoming an astronaut, a firefighter, or the big house with a white picket fence. Their dreams consist of what they will eat next, and you cry cause God shows you what His heart breaks for. That is also worship.
The night that God pilled back the packing tape, opened the box and pulled me out was the night that I set down my pride, stopped longing for the passion, and telling myself that’s not for me, or what people may think, was the night that I truly learned how to worship our Father.
I don’t think I’ve cried as much as I did during training camp. I was finally free to worship my Father in heaven how ever I wanted.
But the greatest thing about it, every morning since, I wake up with a new song in my heart, for the most part. We don’t need music to sing a song, we need to break out and just worship in our own way. Because drowning in the middle of the river of His love is so much better then being on the side of it, waiting for Him to come over. The love is out there; all we need to do is walk out into the river, stop talking about it, and actually go seek Him there. His love is out there for us to take.
