The Worship Part of Me

Maybe some of you don’t know, but I’m not just a writer. Gasp!

I’m also a worship leader.

Growing up, I liked music but I never loved music.

I liked musical groups. You could say I loved musical groups.

Okay, I loved Donny Osmond. There I said it.

I just don’t have many memories of loving to sing or loving music, or even worship.

There were albums I loved like Fleetwood Mac Rumors or America’s greatest hits.

My older brother and I loved an album by a gospel singer, Reba Rambo.

I remember singing a lot when I was working at Publix.

The acoustics in the back hall were amazing.

When I was in college, my sorority had a Greek sing with a partnered fraternity.

My friends said, “You have to be in the sing. You have a great voice.”

I do?

Maybe I knew I could sing. I can’t remember. I think I wanted to BE a singer, like Amy Grant, but mostly because I wanted to be famous.

And rich.

After college I moved to where I live now and found a church. It was during the worship sets of the Friday night singles group that I learned I could sing and other people enjoyed it.

But I also learned that when I sang, things happened.

Yet my training ground as a worshipper started long before singing was introduced into the mix.

As a girl, I wrote poems to God.

I walked through the woods behind my grandma’s house and talked to Him.

Worship is about intimacy. Not talent or ability.

And that starts in those quiet moments when no one is watching but Him.

During a youth retreat one year in the early 90s, the worship band was small. A keyboard player, guitar player and drummer.

Even though I was not a teen, I was the only singer.

One evening as we were lingering in worship, I just decided to let go and sing. Like I remembered growing up.

I grew up in the emerging non denominational, charismatic movement and it was not unusual for me to hear people singing, worshipping in tongues.

So that’s what I did. Let my heart go.

I sang for a few minutes and when I opened my eyes, my husband and a friend stood in the back of the room, wide eyed. Stunned.

I thought, “Uh-o, what’s wrong? That must have been horrible.”

But my husband immediately gave the signal to “keep singing,” so I did.

Of course, I was all self conscious and trying too hard. The song lost some of it’s sincerity, but it was then I knew worship and I were a team.

We are all worshippers. If you love Jesus, you are a worshipper.

But we have different giftings and callings.

For me, it was to sing. And when I sing, something changes in the room.

My musical talent is limited. I’m not a great harmony singer and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve started a song in the wrong key.

But I can sing freely to any melody. I know where the music is going before it gets there.

I can pick up any new song and sing it half way through the first time.

I can fit words into a four chord progression.

God designed me for worship with a specific set of tools.

While I can play keys a little bit, I can’t write songs or music.

I am totally dependent on the band when I lead worship.

And I like it that way.

I never dreamed of being a worship leader until the summer of ’99.

My husband and I traveled to Poughkeepsie, NY with some of the older youth to support friends in a summer youth rally.

This church has one of the best worship leaders and one evening while enjoying the music and worshipping, I felt this rising in my gut.

“I can do this. I can lead worship.”

What? When? Where? How?

At my home church, I hadn’t been on the worship team for two years.

Our senior pastor was also the worship leader. The back up worship leader was an experience singer and musician.

We’d never had a woman worship leader.

The next night at the rally, I had this, “Get off the stage, let me do it” roar in my belly.

So I said, “Okay God, if you want me to lead worship, I will but You do it.”

Within six months, our senior pastor announced a move in his life and was leaving the church.

Guess who was tapped to be one of the new worship leaders.

Yep.

I’ve been the worship leader for 13 years now.

I’ve grown a lot in my ability but I still depend on the band and the other singers to lead us before the throne.

I feel raw and weak in my ability but I love, love, love when He meets me.

I’ll leave you with this.

One Sunday before worship I was praying, giving God my weakness and inability to really lead worship without Him. He said, “Why don’t you have the same attitude in your writing.”

“Because I’m good at that!”

Ah…

I do pray over my writing and cry out to Him for every book but I am, was, way more confident as a writer than worship leader.

Then He said this, “The problem is most people will not give me their weaknesses. They only want me to use them in their strength.”

This profoundly hit me.

We are so eager to go “God, here, use me like this. I’m good at it.”

But rarely do we say, “Lord, I’m so weak in this area, but use me.”

Many times we are even talented in our weaknesses but we just don’t want to be exposed.

So, offer the Lord your weaknesses. See what He can do!

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