Surprisingly, or maybe not so, knives are not the only things that require sharpening. At least, if they want to be operating at the full capacity in which they were designed to operate. People, in fact, especially this one, require sharpening as well.
Yesterday, I got just that.
We (World Race Staff) were all standing around the table in the conference room in Gainesville, Georgia worshipping the Lord. We have been spending some fairly long days together wading through the entire concept, process, vision, and goals of The World Race–and Sunday morning, we needed to enter into the presence of God together before sitting back down at the table.
Worship was amazing. The Spirit was extremely present. There were angels in the room. I was having an incredible time with my God, but I knew something was missing, I wasn’t entering in as fully as I could see those around me were.
My mind drifted (or so I thought) and I saw a glimpse of a logo, a drawing. I brushed it aside and went back to where I was ‘supposed’ to be in worship.
Wrong.
That was God. That was a place of worship open for me that He wanted to express Himself through, and invite me into.
I dismissed it, and went back to what ‘real’ worship is ‘supposed’ to look like (which for many, means through song and instrument, not trying to say it isn’t). But I had, yet again, put myself, and my God, inside a box.
Die boxes!
As worship came to a close, we sat in the presence of the Lord for a beautiful moment. There was a thick presence of holiness and it gave me the smallest little glimpse at perfection.
Then, as people began to share what the Lord was doing or had shown them, I began to see that there was so much more offered at the table than what I personally had grabbed. I had missed out on something even more rich and beautiful than I had experienced. I didn’t know what went wrong. What did I miss?
And then Michael, our coach / boss / director / mentor / father / spiritual authority / prophetic man, gave me a word.
He said, Andi, you are stuck. You have not entered into your full expression of worship. You were supposed to express yourself in another way and you did not. He said, I’m not sure if it was dance, artistic expression, a drawing, a logo, a design, or what, but you were invited into that place. And you chose not to go there. You’ve got to get unstuck. You’ve got to get unstuck. You’ve got to get unstuck. And he repeated this 11 times. (Eleven is the number of transition).
Oh yeah. That’s what I missed.
I had deprived my God of my fullest expression of worship of Him. I had turned my nose up at how He created me to experience Him and bring glory and praise to Him. I had stuffed Him inside that box of how we define ‘worship’ in our church culture.
And so now, I am unstuck. Now, I move into more freedom. Now, I walk in obedience to how He created me to worship.
That box is smashed.
I got sharpened.
