At our first debrief, I tried something new. I have noticed that there are a lot of news happening in my life, and I don’t know how to keep up with all of them. I guess I have to start getting used to new things because I am on the World Race, traveling to 11 countries I have never been to. There are bound to be new things. During a night session with our entire squad, I led worship with two of my teammates.
I started learning how to play the ukulele a couple weeks before I left for my trip, hoping that a few months down the road, I would be able to stand in front of a group of people to lead them in worship. Even though that was my hope, I didn’t actually think it would happen. Well golly gee, I did it. After only 1 month on the race, I stood up in front of a group of people and played my uke. We played a set of four songs that we had just learned, and it was a blast. Don’t get me wrong, there were wrong chords, pitchy notes, and out of rhythm strumming, but I did it, and I think the Lord smiled because I did something that was glorifying to Him without knowing if I would be good at it. So here’s to new things and continually getting better at them.
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My teammate was reviewing my blog before posting it and said that I didn’t have enough vulnerability and detail, so she wrote about her experience as an audience member of the worship night:
“I experienced one of the clearest examples of freedom during debrief. My teammates, who had only begun learning to play instruments and had never been on a worship team, led worship on our second night. They were full of fear as they stepped into the role.
But does fear have a space within freedom? Does freedom completely wash out fear? Can one truly be free if one is still fearful?
That night, as they led worship, I saw how freedom is not an escape from fear, it’s being in the middle of fear and knowing there is victory there. The strumming was off at times, some notes were missed, they played softer when they were unsure, but they continued playing. And the room was filled with the sound of worship.
Freedom does not remove fear, it adds courage. You cannot have courage if you are absent of fear – that would be simply stepping into the ordinary instead of stepping into extraordinary. And if you had been there that night, you would have stepped into a room of full freedom.”
— Janele Tating
