I graduated college with a degree in Contemporary Worship Leadership in 2011. I learned a lot from some amazing professors but probably one of the most important things I learned and still have to remind myself is that worry and worship cannot co-exist, which means they can’t be present at the same time. Read that again. Worry and Worship cannot co-exist.
Imagine sitting in a church service. The music starts and everyone around you stands to enter into worship. You reluctantly stand because If you were being honest the morning was not pleasant. You were running late and one of your kids was mad at you because you poured their milk in the wrong blue cup, while your other kid decided now would be a good time to build a fort. In the car, your spouse and you got into an argument on the way to church and when you pull into the parking lot you drop that argument for now and put on a smile so no one notices anything out of the ordinary. For some of you, the morning before this service was fine, but the past week was a disaster and you don’t know if you can take one more blow. Does either of those scenarios sound familiar? I think we have all been there.
So standing in that service as the worship leader welcomes everyone, all your mind can focus on is what happened this past week or this morning. The first song ends and the whole time you stand there with your arms crossed looking at the lyrics on the screen, even singing along but you didn’t pay any attention to what you were singing. So let me ask you. Were you worshiping? If you answered yes, I’m sorry but I’m going to have to disagree with you. To be truly worshiping you need to be all in. The circumstances in your life may be something you can’t change, but I believe God deserves every part of us. Putting aside those distractions will completely change your worship experience.
I want to make one thing clear, worship is not just a Sunday morning musical experience. Worship is an everyday, intentional action to focus every aspect of your life on what Christ did for you and how you can be more like Jesus every day. So how do you do that? The best way I have found is by creating rhythms in my life and here are just a few examples… This includes starting my day off with worship music. We try to play it throughout the morning while everyone is getting ready for school and work to start the day off on a positive note. When I drive in the car by myself I spend a lot of that time in prayer, this is my safe space to get all my thoughts and feelings out. I try to find a time to dive into the word or a good devotional, but this is probably one of the hardest parts for me because in general, I don’t like to read so I have to be very intentional about this. One way that has helped me is our church has created a One Step Closer app. It was designed to help you take one step closer to Jesus every day. It has three categories: Be with Jesus, Become like Jesus & Do the things that Jesus did. You also get daily notifications that can keep you on track. Let’s be honest I struggle with consistency when it comes to bible reading and this can help so much. Here is the link if you would like to download the app. ONE STEP CLOSER APP
I pray that this blog today was an encouragement to you and can help in your daily life. Always know I am available to pray with you or just be someone to talk to when life gets hard. E-mail me at megan@churchanywhere.us if you need prayer!
Talk to you soon!