I have written a few other blogs today about the past few weeks in Malaysia, but never felt any peace about posting them yet. I have been frustrated by that because today was our day off and I had planned on getting some new blogs up for you to read since I have been behind. But God kept saying no. I even rewrote one completely and He still said no. Until now… Because God wants me to share with you about what He did in me, with me, and through me this past weekend. Even if I love for things to be in an organized order and would prefer to wait to share this with you til other blogs are posted before, HE wants me to share it now. Because God is way too good and I need to share how awesome He is!
Meet Amy Heiser. She graduated from IWU this past year. Yes, we had been at the same school but didn’t know each other until the last week of school when we met for coffee at McConn, IWU’s lovely coffee shop, after finding out that we were both on the World Race September squad. Come to find out, we were also placed on the same team for the race. It was a total God thing, I know.
Amy’s specialty is her awesome worship leading skills. She totally comes alive when she leads others in worship. You can just tell that the Holy Spirit is using her when she gets up in front of people and leads them in singing to our King.
One day near the beginning of our race, I might have made a joke to Amy that I was going to lead worship like her one day. Since then, Amy has believed in me. She keeps making comments about it, but of course I push it off to the side. At the end of last month she told me that I was going to do it this month, but I thought she was just saying that. I knew for certain it was a joke though because month 2 on the race would definitely be too early ‘for God to use me like that’…month 9 would be more preferred for me.
But God has a sense of humor.
This past Saturday we met with some “young adults” at a church for an evening service. We went prepared for people our age but when we arrived we realized that it was actually people ranging from 26 to 49 years old. Anyways, they asked for 3 of the 6 of us to share our testimonies that evening and also for us to sing. As we were praying silently to ourselves to figure out who needed to be the ones to share their testimony that night, I kept getting a Psalm in my head. I asked if I could introduce the song that we were going to sing because I wanted to share some verses with the congregation. All was well in my soul and I was confident that that is how the Holy Spirit was going to use me.
After the 3 testimonies were shared, I got up to share the verses that were placed in my heart earlier in the evening. Next thing I know, I am the one with the main microphone in my hands while Amy Heiser was over on the keyboard and the rest of the girls on my team were standing behind me on the “back up” mics. I had a mini freak out moment but quickly gained confidence that the Lord was going to use me in that position. Thankfully they also placed a mic where Amy was, and I knew that all would be well. We started singing a song and once we finished it, I looked over to Amy for direction where to go next. She helped me out for a little bit but then she decided to not even make eye contact with me anymore. I later found out that the Lord was telling her to not make eye contact with me, that He wanted to use me. I definitely started freaking out in my head at the time but the Holy Spirit totally took me over and I completely forgot that I was even on stage singing.
I’m not exactly sure what happened that night, but I walked off the stage that night shaking and laughing in my spirit that the Lord used me in such an incredible way. Something that was way out of my comfort zone before as well as something that I never even ever thought I would ever be placed in the position of doing.
The Lord had used me to lead worship!?!
And guess what… God placed me right back in that same position again as a worship leader the next day during the Sunday morning worship service!
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I’m not sure if you’re around me enough when I am home…but if you are, you will know that I do love to sing. However, my speciality is pretty much Disney songs and a few kid-like pop songs that I can jam to. 😉 But I am definitely not a worship leader in any kind of way nor is it even normal for me to get on stage with a microphone to sing. I mean I used to sing in church and at school when I was younger but somewhere along the way I stopped singing.
Was it because of a comment someone made to me? Was it lies that that the enemy was sending to me that I ended up believing? Did I just plain out lose my love for singing? What happened?? And why do I normally feel so much bondage when I start thinking about singing in front of people and around people? etc …
I can proudly say though that the Lord brought freedom over my life this weekend. I have conquered the battle of bondage that has reaped lies that I don’t have a voice that God can use. My voice might not be a lovely sounding voice, but I can and will use it. And I will DEFINITELY use it when I have the opportunity to bring others together to worship our God whose name is worthy to be praised every minute of every day all of the time!!!
So what are YOU letting satan hold you back from???
