Dear Twenty Something, Theresa Soto
Dear Twenty Something,
I remember hearing a message saying to not get comfortable with what you know and don’t get comfortable with worship being how it always is. This message encourages us to being alert and aware that God can do anything beyond what we have ever seen before. That He himself could walk in this room at this moment.
When I heard this…. I thought to myself. Gosh…I’m in a box. I’m limiting myself to what I see and what I know, and I had been leading worship since I was 15. When he said that… this hunger in me came alive… that Jesus HIMSELF can walk in this room at ANY moment…I have not been the same since that day. I remember I began to repent and said “Jesus I’m sorry for thinking that being alive and loving you for 25 years every day of my life, I feel like I’ve got it or that I’d seen it all.” I just began to pray to the lord “let my heart ever stay childish and let my heart ever and always be on an acute awareness of who you are and what you’re doing and that I haven’t seen anything yet…that I’m always looking out for those greater things.”
Worship is surrender, worship costs us its’ that obedience and that thing that he’s asking for and we say I give it.
For me worship goes beyond the music beyond the outward. Worship is the heart going up towards God.
To live a life of worship is seeing Him as he is and responding to the revelation of God you see, worship is intentionally removing the things in our lives that get in the way, worship is not a personality nor just a physical act. Worship is not a passive heart posture. Worship is forgiveness, worship is surrendering your plans for His and it’s not for the faint of heart.
As time has gone by, I’ve come to know more and more of how greatly loved I am by the Father and when I worship, I just can’t help myself. The more time I kept going back to Him and understanding what his original intent was with us…his original intent on what worship would look like, removing all the space. Those moments in worship where we feel suspended, where you feel your feet aren’t on the ground but you’re not quite there yet and you feel like you’re going to explode, it’s because that space between you and the father has gotten so thin. We’re returning, we’re remembering. When we are in a focused place of worship and we make it a practice it’s because it centers us. Yes, we always worship because he is worthy and it’s always first for that. But I think the practicing of worship is more for us than it is for him. There is something that happens when we worship…. you start to remember…you begin to remember you were made for this. Maybe you’ve never known it in your mind but your spirit has always known it and there was never meant to be separation.
Our need to engage both heart and mind in passionate, faith-filled worship of Jesus is so real today.
God never changes. But when we worship, we change.
Worship leads us to remember, return and reconnect with the Father.
