In both our previous church and the one I currently serve, I’ve tried to be authentically real. If I pretend to be someone I’m not, what good is that? So, as it says in 2nd Corinthians, “…I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” The truth is, for some time, I was experiencing a crisis of worship. To be clear, it was never a crisis of faith. Although, if it had been, I would hope that, among believers, I would be held, even in that. I didn’t ever question God or salvation but I was hurting and when I sang, my heart felt fragile. There were songs I struggled to sing to the Lord because memories of those songs were tethered to the stuff of earth. I thought of other things when I sang them.
I am a worshiper. One of the things I love most in life is praising
Jesus through song. I love to help lead others into a place of authentic
worship. I was eager to have opportunities to serve again in that capacity, to
work through my crisis of worship amidst other believers working through
whatever lessons the Lord had for them. If I could help lead these people, I
could unravel the crisis. But our church is filled with wonderfully talented
people and God had other plans. He had His own place for me. He spoke into my
heart that everything else needed to be stripped away.
I am called to worship the one, true God. Regardless of blessings,
grief, pain, joy, and circumstance, He is the object of my affection. God
reminded this girl with a theatre degree that she doesn’t need a stage
(metaphorical or otherwise). I’m here to worship Him. Period. And so I began to
redefine how I accomplish that. I thought a lot about the lyrics to “Heart of
Worship” and how, not only do I not need a stage, I don’t even need music.
When the music fades
All is stripped away
And I simply come
Longing just to bring
Something that’s of worth
That will bless your heart
I’ll bring you more than a song
For a song in itself
Is not what you have required
You search much deeper within
Through the way things appear
You’re looking into my heart
I’m coming back to the heart of worship
And it’s all about you
It’s all about you, Jesus
I’m sorry, Lord, for the thing I’ve made it
When it’s all about you
It’s all about you, Jesus
Even if the music is gone, I will worship. Even if I never
sing in front of a church again, I will worship. Even if the strings on every
guitar are broken and my voice is gone, I will worship purely from the pew, the
bedroom, the car. I will sing acapella in my kitchen. I will run lines of praise
silently through my head while choosing a head of cauliflower. My worship
cannot be tied to a person, an experience, a memory, a stage. It can only be
bound to the Lover of my soul. He doesn’t require a song. He’s looking at my
heart. He knows when it is hurt. He knows when it is stuck in a sin cycle. He
knows when it is striving to be above reproach. He knows it always, even when I
don’t know it myself. He longs for it to be a heart of worship.
Over the past many months, I learned these lessons and more.
I certainly never planned to tell anyone else about this journey of worship
that I’ve been on with the Lord. I wasn’t going to share that my guitar and my
voice hung silent on the wall for a while, and that, one day, I picked them
both up and began to sing again. From a place of absolute contentment, I knew
that if God never called me to worship from a stage again, it would be
absolutely fine. But, in a twisted story of covid quarantines, I was asked to
sing on the worship team this morning. It had been awhile.
Believing that I was in a place where the Lord would find
my, “Yes,” to be acceptable, I agreed. I had one day’s notice and I asked for
the song list so that I could practice. When I received it, I choked back
tears, smiled, and said, “I see what you did there, Lord.”
The first song I sang from the stage this morning was “Heart
of Worship.”
