School of Worship
I know, I know it has been a fattt minute since I last posted. I feel I have had so much to share about this season as well as sharing the testimonies from my outreach in the Himalayas, but I have been waiting patiently on the Lord. I do not want to just post updates to stay relevant or in a scheduled manner but rather I want to post when the Lord is stirring something inside me. My goal is not to just get out as much content as possible but rather when the time is right and the content is Holy Spirit breathed. This last week I felt the Lord stirring something in me and I felt inspired. So I am gonna share what has been going on these past 7 weeks as I have attended School of Worship (SOW) in Kona Hawaii. I am going to share with you what SOW is and why it was started as well as what God has been speaking to me throughout this school.
School of Worship Fam
History and Goals
We just finished up week 7 out of 12 so we are now on the back half of the school and man have I learned so much. SOW was created as a secondary school of YWAM in 1990 for talented musicians and worship leaders who lacked character. Bob fits noticed worship leaders with great abilities but they lacked the relationship with God, so he wanted to create a school that truly knew God so that they could go into the nations and make God known through worship and music. The future of the great commission is not in reading but rather through oral and that is why music is so powerful because scripture can be taught and remembered so easily through song. It is said that the reason we have missionaries is because a lack of worship. When every nation and tribe is worshipping then we will no longer need missionaries because the great commission will be complete. Obviously we are always evangelist as long as we are followers of Christ. Like Jesus said "follow me and I will make you fishers or men." But what I am saying is we will not see the completion of the great commission until every nation and tribe knows God and worships him. The goal of SOW is not just to equip worship leaders to bring worship in places where it is not, but also to release the sounds of the nations. SOW does not want to bring our "western God" with our "western worship" but rather help the sounds of every tribe be released and worship the God of the universe in their own mother tongues with their native sounds and instruments.
Worship Leading
What does it mean to lead worship and how does one do it affectively? Something that SOW has so welly equipped me with is the importance of being a good worship leader. A good worship leader is not just one who can play well and sing in the right key. Though it is very important to work for excellence in your abilities it is most important that your oil is filled. What I mean by having your oil full is that if you step on a stage to facilitate a room in worship but have not had quiet time and your own intimate times with the Lord then it will be very hard to lead a group of people somewhere you have never been. The best worship leaders are the ones who live a life that matches the things they say and do in worship. A common misconception is that our lives are worship which is not particularly true. Our entire life is not worship but our lives should reflect what we are saying in worship whether we are leading the worship or in the congregation. If we sing "give me Jesus, I don't want anything else but you" but when worship is over we do not pursue God's heart or read the Bible then we are kinda singing and worshipping in vain. That is why someone who may not be super talented in singing or as a musician but is close with God can make you feel a certain type of way in worship. It is because the Holy Spirit is flowing through them and the anointing that they received in their intimacy with Christ in the quiet place is now falling off of them onto the congregation. In 1 Samuel 16 David played his harp for Saul and it made the evil spirit that was tormenting Saul go away. Saul had asked his men to find someone who was good at playing the harp and that is why David was chosen to play for Saul, because of his excellence. But it was not his excellence that gave Saul peace from the evil spirit, but instead it was because David had the Lord like stated in verse 18 "He's a brave warrior, he's good looking, he can speak well, and the Lord is with him." David had cultivated such intimacy with the Lord while playing the harp that it could quite literally heal a schizophrenic at the sound of his fingers plucking the strings. He exported the intimacy that he had stored up all those days playing the harp in the pasture by himself and it should be the same for worship leaders. We should be excellent at playing our instrument or singing so that instead of thinking about what note to play we can think about what the Holy Spirit is doing in the room and then move in that direction. Likewise we should be full of oil so that we can export the intimacy that we have been experiencing with God. It's like if a preacher was to come up and give a sermon about living a certain way but he does not even do those things himself. He holds no authority, and it is the same with worship leaders who hop on a stage to worship God without doing it on their own time.
How God Has Been Speaking To Me
In all that has been going on with this amazing school God has spoken a couple things to me. In this season while I have been reading about the Israelite I have felt such an emphasis on God's faithfulness, chasing his presence, and waiting on the Lord. These past couple months have been a lot of spiritual highs and lows. Due to the craziness of what happened in the Himalayas with me almost dying twice and the other spiritual highs experienced it made it hard to find God in the mundane things or when I am tired and weary. It was like at one moment God spoke to me through everything, the trees would give me a revelation or a word that someone said matches what I read in my quiet time and I could feel God's presence in everything then all the sudden its like I could not feel God at all. If you have ever experience this it can be very difficult and discouraging. I cried out to God "where has your presence gone?" "All I seek is your presence but I cannot find it" "Can I even hear you?" "Are you even speaking?". In that time of feeling like I could no longer feel, I started doing less and less to seek his presence because I could barely feel or see God. I had shorter quiet times and read the Bible less because it felt as if I had no flame left. I still sought after God, but I just felt as if everything I was doing was not working. In this time I was reading Exodus and a verse that stood out to me was Exodus 20:21 The people stood far off, while Moses went near to the thick darkness where God was. Something ignited in me when reading this. I thought to myself "I want to be one who goes into the darkness for the presence of God even when everyone else goes the opposite way". I realized that God was testing me, he wanted me to seek him out more when in a season of not hearing him. I realized that if I do enter the darkness to be closer to God then it may not seem like he is as near. I may have to remember where he has delivered me in my previous trials and tribulations. His faithfulness is enduring and never falling. I started going deep into that darkness. Though I could not feel or hear from God I pressed in deeper. I gave up things that were consuming my time. I fasted and prayed for days. I filled my mind with scripture. I weakened the flesh and strengthened the Spirit. I realized that in times when it feels like we cannot press in to what God is doing in us then we should do even more because he is probably trying to teach us something.
I then came across Exodus 33:15 about Mosses saying to God "I will not go unless your presence goes with us. Is it not because of your presence that we are distinct from the others on earth." I do not want to go anywhere or do anything if the presence of the Lord is not in it. Often times that requires me to wait upon the Lord which is the third thing God has highlighted to me in this season. That whatever it may look like I can wait upon the Lord. In Isaiah it says He who waits upon the Lord shall renew his strength, he will mount up on wings like eagles, he will run and not grow weary, he will walk and never faint. When we wait upon the Lord we are submitting to his ways and strengthening the spirit. When we have allowed our spirit to be strengthened by the tarrying on the Lord it is then that we are strong and will have the spiritual endurance to ran in this life and not grow weary. The next time you are facing a dry season or feel like you are in the wilderness I encourage you to remember the Lord's faithfulness in prior seasons. In Ezekiel 16 God says that "Israel trusted in their beauty and played the whore and in all their abominations they did not remember their youth." God had delivered Israel and made a covenant with them but they forgot and because they forgot what God had done they did not trust what God was gonna do. God is faithful and sometimes we are called to step into the darkness when everyone else steps away. When you arrive in the darkness seeking God's presence it is important that you slow down to the speed of patience and wait on the Lord. Tarry with him and see what he does. Listen to what he says when you wait upon him and always remember what he has brought you out of.
Add comment
Comments