leaning on worship.

Do you ever think about the place that you're in and reflect like this - "God, how did I get here?  Why am I here?  What am I doing?"  If you said yes, thanks for the honesty, because the answer is yes from every single person at some point or another in their lives.  Feeling like you're caught in the middle of being overwhelmed and overcoming.  Head barely above water, but you're still swimming.  Seemingly giving everything that you have toward an anticipated end and feeling like you're perpetually running in place.  In these times where we feel so caught up by life, it's so important that we remember to lean on worship.

One of the things that I love so much about the dictionary is that there are multiple definitions for every word.  One of the definitions for the word worship reads - "adoring reverence or regard" and then (if you're anything like me and want clarification on words within definitions you'll understand this) I looked up the word reverence and it is defined as - "a feeling or attitude of deep respect tinged with awe".  If we put worship and reverence together, the understanding that worship is not conditional becomes so clear.  We cannot wait on our circumstances to become favorable and call for after-the-fact worship, but we have to worship our way through our circumstances until we realize that, favorable or unfavorable, I'm worshipping because the Lord is just that good.

Understanding what worship is and when worship should happen has been such a revelation to me.  I am a worshipper and have been engaging in worship all of my life but what I mean by "revelation" is that I have been so stirred up to deepen my understanding and profession of worship than ever before.  Adoring regard tied together with an attitude of deep respect...that's a lot different that on-the-surface worship.  We don't worship for other people, we don't worship for desired results, we don't worship to satisfy a feeling temporarily.  We worship because we understand that no matter the 'place' of life, we are so blessed.  To have even a surface-level understanding of who God is and what He's done should stir up a desire to worship.  But, as you dig deeper, you realize that the more you lean in on worship, the less you worry, the less you're anxious, the less you try to control things, and the more you surrender.  God never called us to carry burdens, and if we can't do anything about the things weighing heavy on our spirits, we ought to worship our way through that thing until we trust God to handle the details.  He already paid it all, we just have to trust that 'paying it all' covers everything.

Last week, the praise team that I so lovingly serve on was issued a challenge, per se.  The challenge was this: spend seven days of on your face worship and watch how the Lord begins to change things.  Isn't it incredible the things that we can see when we spend intentional time doing what we've innately been called to do?  Do your circumstances change?  Nope.  Do the people around you change?  Nope.  One thing that changes is your desire to so tightly grip solutions to problems that you have no business solving.  As you loosen the grip, you understand how much the Lord really does provide, protect, serve, cherish and love you, and that in itself brings you back to the root of worship.  You don't have to solve the burdens of your life because you aren't equipped to carry them.  You're just equipped and called to worship and to let God take care of the fine print.

Worship is so much more than an obligatory act; it's a shift of attitudes, desires, controls, inhibitions and understanding.  From our innermost core, we're created to worship.  Don't give up on God because He won't give up on you...He's ABLE!