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 5thand 6thgraders and also in our youth group. In college I led worship for 1-5thgrade 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.
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