Worship Ministry - My Story - The Unfolding of God's Vision in Me

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again- when we hear the song of the Lord over our lives we can recognize the voice of the enemy as the discordant clang that it really is.

I grew up in the church.  I felt the presence of God from a young age and learned his voice.  Simultaneously I grew in my musical gifting.  I was always thrown into worship bands because I could sing.  In Junior High and High School I sang as my friend Brennan played for the 5^thand 6^thgraders and also in our youth group. In college I led worship for 1-5^thgrade at my church.

I grew up around musicians and worship leaders.  My best friend went on to play in “big church” at quite a young age (my church used to be a mega church). I was jealous but reconciled my jealousy with what I believed to be true that a) I wasn’t called to it and b) I wasn’t that great anyway.  I was going to be a theatre artist.  I was going to do musical theatre.  Ministry was just what I did for now: I served where I was needed.

I also watched as worship team ministry became a political thing.  It was a very closed group at my church.  I noticed my friends vying for attention to get into higher leadership positions.  I didn’t want any part of that.  I just sang my heart out and wrote songs to Jesus in the secret place. I sang the Scriptures.  I sang my prayers and sang whatever I heard God sing back to me.  No one taught me to do this.  It just overflowed from my heart.

Then in college I started attending a home group led by the amazing Sam Cerny.  He was preaching things that IHOP was preaching, things that spoke to my very core. Then he moved to Kansas City and started ministering with Lou Engle in the Call school of ministry.  I visited him with my friends from the group and remember after our first day in the prayer room the two of us just bursting at the seams talking to each other.  This is what I did in the secret place and they were doing it for the world to see!  I had to get back to that place where I finally felt I belonged.  I had to get to that place of God’s presence.

But I went back to California to finish my bachelors degree, another important goal to me.  My friend who had encountered God in KC also moved there and did the Call School that year.  I visited again at One Thing and declared that I was coming back. And I continued to serve the kids at my church leading them in worship.

Fast forward a few years.  God told me to move to New York so I packed my Toyota Camry and drove to New York where I didn’t know anyone and thought I was going to start working in the theatre instantaneously. Instead I started attending this tiny praying church on the second floor of a building downtown.  I didn’t want to do anymore ministry.  I thought God had called me out of ministry.

Then the young worship pastor heard me singing in the audience and told me to join the worship team.  I said no.  Then I came back later and told him yes. As I started to sing on the team I fell in love. I was doing what I did in the secret place again: singing what I heard from Heaven.  People were hearing my songs and getting blessed.  And the presence of God was falling.  I felt Him strongly in that place.

But I wasn’t a worship leader.  Worship leaders were musicians.  Worship leaders were crazy detail oriented like my best friend growing up who played in “big church.”  I was just singer who loved to sing songs to the Lord and played my guitar very poorly just to do that.

Then Bill our pastor came up to me multiple times and told me “You’re called to this.  You can lead with just your voice.  This is what you’re supposed to be doing.” He celebrated my giftings and told me what they meant. I half believed him. People had given me prophetic words about being a worship leader before and I just laughed.  After all, I grew up in a church of prophetic people and no onesaid I was a worship leader. No one asked me to lead ever. I was just the girl who could sing that worship leaders threw into their teams to sound good.  At least that’s what I thought.

Then I started connecting dots.  I had the lowest self worth. I had actually spent a year in KC just having identity spoken over me. I really didn’t believe I was good at anything and that people just put up with me rather than inviting me to be anywhere.

As I look back at my story my pastors are the biggest reason I have stuck with this vision of worship leading.  I went through what I call my David season where I just really wanted to be loved and was in a relationship I shouldn’t have been in. During that season my pastor offered to pay for me to go to a worship training school in California.  I turned her down.

The next year God apprehended me as I surrendered to him and there were some key moments involving him telling me who I am called to be and giving me a choice to walk down the path I was on away from that call or give up that path and continue toward what he had for me.   I was obedient to the call and went to Bethel's Worshipu.  It changed my entire life.  It was a kairos moment.  I knew the calling on my life was bigger than a church, a ministry, or a mandate to the lost.  I was called to release the presence of God in every way and sound was my primary way. 

Even at that moment I was not leading worship at my church.  But I started to step into it.  I asked to lead a worship set on Tuesdays during the day where one person consistently showed up.  I got connected to some ministries I loved outside of my church and lead worship for them. I watched as demonic people were set free.  I began what I saw God was doing before anyone “appointed” me to a position.

I am grateful that I am in a ministry where I can choose to step into who I am because my leaders saw it before I even knew or wanted to know it existed.  My pastor said something to me that I’ll never forget when I told him how I was feeling a little lost in the shuffle of changes at our church.  He said, “I want you to have a place at the table.”  

I am a part of loving family that wants to see me grow.  I’m not in a corporate setting where I am just here to do my part and leave without growth, without relationship.  I have people who cared enough to come after me and let me know that I’m not forgotten.

We have to know through the changing seasons who we are.  We have to hear what God is saying over our lives.  I just recently had to get alone with God until I heard him speak again over me because I thought HE had forgotten me. When I heard his voice everything else became unimportant.  I knew who I was.  No one else can change that.  They can promote you or demote you but you know who are you.

Who you are is not tied to a ministry or building.  You do not have to be the worship leader at your church to be a worship leader.  You do not have to have a title or ministry to minister.  Who you are is so much greater than that (and this can apply to everything we are called to i.e. dentist, hair dresser, actor, singer, pastor). At the end of the day it’s about surrendering to God everything you have and taking up his yoke. His vision will carry you through the season of drought.  His love will let you know you are not forgotten.

My Life is Not a Movie

I was contemplating us seeing our lives as movies yesterday.  It started with a benign question someone asked me earlier in the day: “If your life was a movie what would the title be and who would play you?”

What interested me most about this question was my internal, immediate response.  I wanted desperately for it to be an epic romantic film.  Then looked around me at my reality and thought for a little while.  I wanted the movie to reflect reality and not a fictional fantasy I held about myself. That fascinated me. That pull back moment.

Then my friend had a moment where he ran into the guy he’s interested in on the train.  He is similar to me and was fascinated by the epic way in which it all played out.  To him the drama of the moment confirmed a lot of his feelings about the moment.  He felt like he was in a movie.  I know exactly how he feels. I ran into my crush once on a subway platform and couldn’t stop thinking about it for days.

I don’t watch a lot of romantic movies for this very reason.  I start comparing my life with what I see.  I recognize this as not a good thing.  It means I’m not willing to face my own reality. I know in extreme cases of this (cases caused by trauma) people can go insane. They just can’t cope with reality. So I know when I am going to that place of watching a romantic comedy, usually it’s because I’m looking for a place to escape.

(Side note: I find it fascinating since I’ve been spending a lot of time with men lately that their place of escape is often physical.  They will just leave a place. But for me I find my escape is inside my brain to a fictional story about my life that I am creating).

Yet last night I felt strongly compelled to watch When Harry Met Sally.  I was nervous because for a very long time I was in a friendship and I wanted it to be more than a friendship (and that’s literally the entire premise of the movie is falling in love with your best friend).  My nervousness came from a fear that maybe somewhere deep down inside I was lying to myself about being in a good place.

Thankfully though I am in a good place I discovered when I watched it.  I didn’t compare my life to the movie.  I recognized the difference instantly.  I am in a place of solid contentment where my imagination is not going to sway me from genuine joy with what is in front of me.

So, how did I get here?  How do I tell my friends how to not live in escapism and create a fictional movie about their lives that isn’t real?  What is the key to being present, not letting fantasy take over? I am going to address this as practically as I can from two standpoints 1) a single person 2) in a relationship/or attracted to someone.

Being single:

It is important in any season of life to live with healthy emotional boundaries. I have realized over the last season that it is quite easy to use other people to meet my needs.  That’s not to say that we weren’t created for community.  But it has to be a two way street.  I am very aware now when I try to “make things happen” with people who are not interested in meeting my needs.  I am also aware that ¾ of the time God is actually the one who is supposed to be meeting my needs, not people at all.  I’m growing in this awareness but when I see that a boundary needs to be set I set it.

Practice thankfulness. Sometimes that’s actually dwelling on the past a little.  Taking yourself down memory lane and showing yourself how you’ve grown.  I took myself on a date to Williambsurg on Saturday after I had a doctor’s appointment in Brooklyn.  I live in Queens so I don’t get to Brooklyn much). I have grown. I felt at home and alive there like I didn’t even feel when I lived there.

 Furthermore, I was so surprised by how happy I felt on my own enjoying the things around me. Why was I so surprised? Because I’ve spent so much of my life believing that I had to be on a  date with someone else to enjoy myself.  I clung to friendships to make me feel happy. Now I’m realizing my happiness comes from within.

In a relationship (before marriage)/liking someone:

Emotional boundaries are important here too! You cannot treat a person you like the same way you treat everyone else. Your heart needs to be protected around them. Fantasy and obsession go hand in hand.  Our culture actually believes this is healthy probably because it’s so easy to be infatuated with the person you’re attracted to.  It isn’t though because in that state you can miss important flaws that you need to consider in order for the relationship to continue to grow.

Physical boundaries in a relationship are super crucial.  I could talk a lot about this.  Suffice to say, it’s easier to fall into that fantasy trap when you’re physically being intimate with someone.  The physical hormones released are actually supposed to bond you in this way, past all rational thinking.  Sex was created for the long hull of marriage to keep us in love. However, if you jump the gun on the physical before it’s time and season you can push yourself into fake movie so quickly and your emotions and brain have to play catch up to the fastest moving train on earth.

Again, I think thankfulness I think is the glue in that holds all of this together. Being thankful for where you’re at and not trying to move ahead or run away from the exact moment in time you are in with the other person. The key here is practicing ongoing contentment. If your partner is not ready to move on to the next level and you are, that is God’s grace for you to grapple with it. Thank him for where you’re at with your partner and surrender your desire for more.  

Living a fantasy may feel good in the moment.  But honestly there's so much that's real that you can miss when you escape to your perfect movie life.  If you don't know how to get out these cycles of fantasy, take a break from the culture of fantasy (romantic comedies, books, or even porn) and practice thankfulness. Live your life from a place of happiness that comes from knowing you are content with your reality.  I promise you it is possible.