My First Lesson in Worship

It took me a long while to really understand worship. When I moved back to Colorado about 5 years ago I was not on good terms with God. I didn’t feel he was loving toward me, nor did I have a whole lot of loving thoughts for myself. I believed, but only by faith. Rarely did I have an experience or feeling that God loved me. Daily life was megaphone loud with his absence.

I’m stubborn though and so I kept hanging on to faith but longing for more. I didn’t want to just live in the realm of propositions and mere intellectual accent. I wanted to know the gospel was real and real for me. I wanted to be the intimate friend of the Lord that the scriptures talked about. I wanted to know His favor and love. Fortunately, there were enough saints around me that had struggled like I was and whom I trusted. An integral part of there lives was frequent worship.

I was pretty cynical about worship. I disliked and was even incensed with worship music, most of it seemed cheesy and seemed to ignore the darkness I battled with and especially the battle I had with loving God. How could I sing lines like, “I could sing of your love forever,” when I wasn’t even sure I could say it once? If there is anything I truly dislike its dishonesty. But I knew I had to try something, or else nothing may ever change. I would at least give my self a chance to put my self in the way of His presence. I started to occasionally attend a music worship service on Friday’s.

It went badly. God never seemed to show up. I’d leave in the same state of mind I came in with, sometimes worse. I did a lot of complaining about the lyrics of the songs, especially if it was upbeat and peppy. I couldn’t stand peppy. I complained about my life. I tried not complaining, I tried to hear something different than the normal train of thought in my head. I sat, I stood, I sang, I was quiet and mostly there was nothing. I felt like a fraud amidst the people around me that seemed so into it. Did they know I was not into it? Did they know that I was really an outsider, that I was not really experiencing God, that I could not say I was His friend?

I went on like this for sometime. I don’t really recall how long, maybe a year, till one Friday came around. I was unemployed at the time, which made the days pretty difficult, unending and unsure. I went to noon worship, more as something to do than as something to restore my soul.

It was no good. I felt the same and now disappointed. I felt like my chance was over. Usually I would concede and leave immediately, but when the music ended I just couldn’t get up. I sat there while the band packed there things and prepared to leave. Just then someone I’d never seen before sat down at the piano and started to play.

It was beautiful. Where had he come from? Where was this music coming from? Why weren’t more people here listening to this? At first I was mistrustful as I listened. I didn’t believe it could be as good as I was hearing. I kept waiting for something cheesy, or cliché, or for one dishonest note, but as he kept playing my cynical skeptic was run off, the tension left my body and I melted into the chair. The music was so easy to be with. I didn’t have to fight with it or rewrite it in my mind.

But the most important thing in that moment was I let myself believe it was from God, for me. Even though I was sitting there in a mess, he opened the door and let His beautiful self wash over me.

That was my first true experience with what worship is; to be all present with who you are in the presence of who He is. The door had been cracked opened, wide enough to hold a light of hope for me so I could find it again.