I sat in the back of the room pouting while everyone else sang and danced. My camp counselor came up to me and asked me if I was okay. “The music is too loud,” I complained. This was my first experience with worship. I thought it was weird, loud, and I didn’t like it. Plus, I never enjoyed music as much as everyone else did when I was growing up. Probably because I couldn’t hear the tone, beat, or rhythm. I didn’t feel music like everyone else did, to my ears music was just a cacophony. The music and worship was my least favorite part of summer camp.
I kept coming back to camp however, and slowly the songs began to stick out to me. There was one worship song we sung a few years in a row. The song was “Oh How He Loves” I was fascinated by lyrics. He loves us? He is jealous for us? The God of the universe actually loves us? As I listened and sang, I wondered at this love. My fourth year at camp, I accepted Christ, and I experienced this love. I found a love I had never known, a love that would never leave me, a love that would follow me all the way to Thailand six years later. As I worshiped, I began to see this love come alive in my life more and more.
One Saturday, after my fifth year of camp, I went with my lifelong friend to Water World. We had gone to camp together and both suddenly wanted to go to church, so after Water World we excitedly attended a Saturday night service. It was maybe my third time in church ever. They sung a song we had sung at camp: “10,000 Reasons.” I had never been more excited about worship. I kept going back to that church, I kept worshiping, and slowly Jesus transformed my life. I never knew worship, but all the sudden all I could do was worship. I never liked music, but all the sudden I had an ipod full of worship songs. I never went to church, but all the sudden I eagerly went to church each Sunday.
I slowly became more expressive in worship, it became less about what everyone else thought and more about what God thought. I started raising my hands and at home I would listen to music and dance. I didn’t think anything of it until one day at church I felt God ask me to dance with him. He was persistent and I saw Him dancing around me, asking me to join Him. At the time, I had started also going to a new church, and at the youth group there were a couple of the girls who danced in the back during worship. I admired them for it, but I never dreamed that would one day be me. God had other ideas. I soon knew I could no longer ignore my conviction, but I was so scared to make a fool of myself. Then, in the last few days of 2016, I went to a giant youth conference in Kansas City. It was there that I danced for the first time, there in the presence the thousands of other believers who came across the country to worship. There was no space, no privacy, but there was God and that’s all I ever needed. At first I danced in little bursts of awkwardness, but then I surrendered, I pressed into what God had for me, and I let Him lead me in dance. It was incredible. I assure you, I looked like a fool, but it was worth it. It was like the whole world fell away, and it was just me and Jesus. I felt practically weightless like I was suspended in the air, my body heated up like God had lite a fire inside of me, and I heard music like I never had before.
The first song we truly danced to was “Storm All Around You” by Jon Thurlow. The song is based on Revelation Chapter 4, where John has a vision of worship in heaven. The lyrics go “I know there are creatures all around You, I know there are lightnings and thunderings, I know there’s a storm all around You, Holy, Holy, Holy.” In heaven the worship never ceases, not because it’s forced, but because the creatures and the elders and the angles are so in awe of God’s glory. You couldn’t drag one of those creatures out of the throne room of God, His presence is too good. I was and am blown away that the God of the universe could care about me so much that He would ask to dance with me. It is insane.
I began to dance in worship. It was humiliating and scary. I didn’t know how to dance, I couldn’t hear the beat, but it didn’t matter. Dancing was my form of surrender. I couldn’t care what anyone else thought, I could only care what God thought. Worship isn’t about me. It isn’t about all the people at church. It is all about God. By dancing I was able to come back to the heart of worship. When I dance in worship, I experience God’s intense and insane love, and I’m declare my love in return.
This is my story of how I have come to know God’s love through worship. Worship is not only music, it is so much more. Worship is a declaration of love. It may seem foolish to dance in worship, and that’s okay. My dancing may not be graceful or beautiful, but that’s all the better. I get to dance with Jesus and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. In that moment, nothing else matters. When I dance I am truly myself, I am bold, unashamed, and confident in who God created me to be. When I dance I come face to face with a love that ignites my whole life. This crazy, reckless, overwhelming love of God is the reason I worship. I worship God because he is great, he is worthy, and because I am so in awe of His love.
