Jesus continues to show me that worship is my favorite way
to hear His voice. Honestly
though, the word “worship” has become such an all-encompassing term for me
these days. The reality, yes, is
that my entire life should be worship to the Lord. Every single thing that I do SHOULD be worship to
Jesus. But worship can look so
different too. Worship can be a
very broad term that doesn’t quite narrow things down enough to effectively
communicate what I’m talking about or it can be a term that is far to specific
to encapsulate all the things I mean when I use the word.
I feel like I might have just gotten confusing for almost no
good reason. The point though is
that I want to use a word other than “worship” so that I communicate what I’m
actually talking about.
Jesus loves to encounter me through time that I spend
singing to Him and listening to Him sing to me. Sometimes I will be well aware that I haven’t heard from the
Lord recently and might even complain about it but then I will also know that I
haven’t been spending time in that place where He likes to speak to me…that
place where I have a guitar and He has a voice.
So anyways, I want to share with you a couple of the things
that Jesus has been speaking to me lately as my guitar and I have spent time
with Him.
Back during the very first month of this journey, Jesus
started speaking to me about His GOODNESS. About the simple truth that He is ALWAYS good and that His
goodness is ALWAYS enough to satisfy my soul. If you remember, I wrote something about that on the face of
my guitar:
It rocked my world to see that there was never any need or
desire that His goodness could not satisfy. There was never a situation in which His goodness could not
be found. It is one of the things
about God that is just always going to be true. It’s not situational.
God is GOOD. Flat out.
I was listening to an awesome sermon recently by Graham Cooke (called ‘God is
the kindest person I ever met’…listen to it if you’re into that). One thing he was talking about in this
sermon is how Jesus loves to give different people deep understandings of the
deep parts of His heart. For
instance, Graham was talking about how the KINDNESS of God has been something
that God is continually bringing new depth and new revelation to in his life.
For me, that truth that Jesus has given me such a desire to
understand more of over and over again is His GOODNESS. I can’t get enough of it. I can’t understand it enough. Thus, He has continued to talk to me about
it over the months. I remember one
time during month two of this trip in Moldova when I was leading worship for
the teams that were there with me.
During worship, we were singing about the goodness of God and Jesus
brought a line to my mind that I ended up singing over and over and over and
over again. It was “There is joy
in your goodness God.”
Since that day, I don’t know how many times I have said that
line during worship. It was a seed
that Jesus planted in my heart that day.
Even though it has been something growing inside me for a long time, I
don’t think I have ever had any idea what the actual fruit of that seed was
going to be. Recently though,
Jesus has REALLY been pouring meaning into that statement though.
I think that part of it is that I really didn’t struggle with maintaining joy
throughout the first part of this trip.
Honestly, until recently, I have never really struggled that much with
choosing joy and resting in joy.
However, the middle months of this trip have brought with them some
struggles that I have never faced.
I am realizing though that Jesus planted that seed of JOY IN
HIS GOODNESS inside my heart 4 months ago so that by the time I needed it
(now), the roots of that truth would have penetrated deep into the soil of my
heart. That truth means SO much
more to me than it did 4 months ago and I can’t really even explain why. It’s simply because it is something
that I have actually spent time after time meditating on it.
His goodness is so real to me daily and now, because this
seed of JOY that COMES FROM that goodness has been able to grow deep roots, it
is bearing fruit. This truth is a
part of my life and who I am now.
I think I’m going to save the other thing that Jesus has
been showing me recently for another post so that this doesn’t end up being
like 2000 words long. Just wanted
to encourage you though to MEDITATE on the things that Jesus is saying to
you. There is always more depth to
the words that He uses than you have grasped, no matter how simple the truth
is. If you need something to
meditate on, just meditate on the fact that JESUS LOVES YOU. See what happens. He will blow your preconceived notions
of what that statement means out of the water. And then, if you meditate on it again, He’ll blow you out of
the water again. That’s just how awesome He is.
