Lord, here I am. I have finally sat down to write that blog. Just use this story for Your glory. I have nothing to prove and no one to impress because I am fully known and fully loved by You.
Shout out to the Armor of God Bible study that my team has been doing. Priscilla Shirer literally said “Hey, if God is telling you to write that blog. Just do it!”
So here I am: embracing Nike’s slogan and “just doing it.”
My squad and I had the privilege to attend The Awakening in Chiang Mai, Thailand several weeks ago. This was an event where four different squads (B, E, F, and V) came together to spend time in worship, fellowshipping with one another, and building each other up. For a few days, I got to spend time with some of my fellow racers who are all on different parts of their World Race journey.
Will, Heather, myself, and Nettie. The Worship track leaders at The Awakening.
During one of the sessions, one of my squad mates received words or phrases for each of her fellow women on the team. As she listed them off, I remember her saying, “Shelby has a heart of worship.” Little did she know, this was the very thing that I had been struggling with.
At training camp, our squad leadership asked me to be the worship coordinator. Humbled and honored by their request, I accepted knowing that this was exactly what the Lord had been preparing me for the previous months and even years.
The Lord has been watering a seed of worship in my heart for years now. This was definitely not a painless process of planting and watering that seed. In fact, it has been some of the most pain-filled years of my life.
It all started my sophomore year of college.
At age 19, I was facing hip surgery. A surgery that would change things. A process that was painful and yet prolific in my journey with the Lord.
Now, don’t pull out the tissues yet because I’m not searching for pity by any means. What I want you to see is the greatness of God and how He has the ability to take any and all circumstances and get glory out of it.
This surgery came in the middle of a hard season of my life. The spring before surgery I went to two funerals: one of a younger man at my church and the other of my great grandmother. In the midst of grieving, I had this hip surgery.
Now to put it in perspective, your hips affect everything. I couldn’t walk without assistance for a couple weeks and every day I had to strap my leg into this machine that mimicked the movement of a bicycle to keep my hip joint from stiffening up and creating scar tissue. 8 hours each day, I had to strap into this thing. It was definitely not my favorite activity.
I found myself each day frustrated that God would allow this to happen. I’m not supposed to spend my summer like this. I’m supposed to be doing all the things that every other 19-year-old is doing, NOT riding this imaginary bicycle that must have been created by Satan himself.
Nevertheless, God met me in the midst of this. My pastor had given me a guitar a few months prior that I hadn’t really spent much time with but that would change very soon.
As I was sitting in my room one day, my eyes caught on the guitar across the room from me. As clearly as ever, I felt the Lord whispering, “Shelby, you can either wallow in this or you can learn to worship me through it.”
It wasn’t easy but day after day, the Lord met me in that place of pure surrender.
That summer I learned how to play the guitar.
Through my junior year, the Lord continued to meet me in that place of worship as I grieved the loss of three more family members and one of the sweetest and most servant hearted ladies at my church. And since then, through every up and down, through every bout of doubt and hardship the Lord was faithful to meet me in that place every single time.
Now, let’s bring it back to (almost) present day.
While in Thailand, I had the opportunity to lead worship alongside my team on many occasions. If you’ve kept up with my blog so far, you know that Thailand wasn’t the easiest of places to be. The atmosphere was heavy with spiritual warfare and it may have been the first time that I can say without a doubt that I was being attacked in a tangible way. And Satan, being the clever and tricky being that he is, knew exactly when to attack me: during worship and prayer.
These attacks came in the form of dizziness. It made it hard for me to concentrate and more difficult to finish playing the songs we were singing. It never reached the place where I had to stop, but it sure shifted my focus. Instead of singing to the Father Himself, I suddenly began thinking more about how I was going to make it through the next 10, 15, 20 minutes of worship.
The dizziness was really just a distraction. A distraction from the heart of worship: gazing into the eyes of the Father Himself. I couldn’t do that when the room felt like it was spinning, and the enemy knew that was the way to get me.
My perspective shifted week 2 in Cambodia. We had sunrise worship on the rooftop of the Overflow Guesthouse. In those first two weeks at Overflow, I was reading Psalm 91 multiple times a day as a reminder of the protection that we are offered under the Lord. This didn’t stop the attacks but it would be something that the Lord would use when week 2 rolled around.
By week 2, I really had hit my breaking point. I didn’t want to play my guitar any more. I didn’t want to sing anymore. But that day was different. That day I felt a strong urge to stay on the rooftop after my teammates and the staff went back down. All I had with me was my guitar, my journal and my Bible. I sat up there for hours, with my Bible open to Psalm 91, and just processed things.
Next thing I knew, I was strumming my guitar. And while having this conversation with the Lord, lyrics flowed out. I was in shock. The Lord had just given me a song to sing.
“He lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud and the mire.
He set my feet on solid ground and steadied me as I walked along.
He has given me a new song to sing, a hymn of praise to our God.”
Psalm 40: 2-3 (NLT)
I was encouraged to share this new song at our debrief in Cambodia. My teammate, Amber, recorded me singing it. (Shout out to Amber for recording it, and to AJ for playing the bucket for me 🙂 You can find the video of it at the bottom of this blog.
I guess the reason that I wanted to share this was to say this: the Lord is growing a passion and a desire in each and every one of us. From the outside, our passions may look like our strongest points. But in reality, our passions likely grow from the weakest and most vulnerable parts of our stories.
It was exactly three years ago today that I had hip surgery and little did I know what the Lord had in store for me. In that season, the only hope that I had was that Jesus would meet me in that place where I sat with my guitar. I still have that hope. He meets me in that place every time.
Embrace your weakness. Because through your weakness, the power of Jesus shines the most.
“Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. Each time He said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
2 Corinthians 12:8-10 (NLT)
