I Will Always Sing

Before I get into my reflections on my worship meditation this week, I need to share with you a wonderfully intense experience I had Thursday morning. Around 2:30 am I awoke from a dream. It was so strange. I was in heaven, or at least a heavenly place. I was surrounded by angelic type beings that had no form that I could discern. They seemed to glow, filled with light, so much so that I couldn’t see any arms, or legs or anything really. They were singing in a language that I couldn’t understand, but my soul sang with them. It was like something inside me understood what I was hearing, even though my brain didn’t get it at all. I sang with them in worship of God. And just as my brain began to understand what I was hearing, the dream began to fade and I awoke with a coughing fit (my norm). When I woke up I held my breath, trying to stop the cough, but also because I felt like if I laid there very still and concentrated I would remember the language I had heard. It was right there, on the fringes of my brain, and then it faded. My heart still longs to sing that song again and I hope that I will reenter that place in my dreams. It was wonderful! Have any of you ever had a similar experience?

This week’s worship song was Even Louder by The Church Will Sing. Let me share some of the lyrics from this awesome song:

Faithful in the sanctuary; Faithful in the storm
Worthy in the empty spaces; Worthy in my song
A thousand years of endless praise will never be enough
Through it all my heart will cling to Your unfailing love
Even if the drums stop beating
My soul will keep on singing
Even louder, even louder
Even when my eyes can’t see it
I’ll sing ’til I believe it
Even louder, even louder
I will sing Your promise in the dark of the valley
Until I see Your goodness in the land of the living

I highlight the above lyrics because they spoke so deeply to my heart. I’m not sure about you, but I have had times in my life where I haven’t felt the presence of God. I have had times where I thought that I was all alone and that God was not even remotely listening to the weeping of my soul or the beckoning of my heart. Crying in my bed, or my car, or in a corner. But God was there. And how do I know that? Because even when my eyes can’t see or feel Him, He is there. His Word gives me unimaginable hope:

• 1 John 5:14 (TPT), “Since we have this confidence, we can also have great boldness before him, for if we ask anything agreeable to his will, he will hear us.”
• Psalm 66:19 (TPT), “But praises rise to God, for he paid attention to my prayer and answered my cry to him!”
• 1 Peter 3:12 (TPT), “For the eyes of the Lord Yahweh rest upon the godly, and his heart responds to their prayers. But he turns his back on those who practice evil.”
• Hebrews 4:14-16 (TPT), “So then, we must cling in faith to all we know to be true. For we have a magnificent King-Priest, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who rose into heavenly realm for us, and now sympathizes with us in our frailty. He understands humanity, for as a Man, our magnificent King-Priest was tempted in every way just as we are, and conquered sin. So now we come freely and boldly to where love is enthroned, to receive mercy’s kiss and discover the grace we urgently need to strengthen us in our time of weakness.”

My friends, I know that life can sometimes, or even often, be overwhelming. But God is there in the midst. His loving kindness is poured over us. His mercy can overwhelm even the most daunting and discouraging circumstances. And even when we can’t see it, or feel it, we must still seek Him and worship Him! We must sing loudly to combat the voice of the enemy that tries to convince us that God is not present. And it is in these moments of desperation, when it seems as if God is not there, that our worship can transform our lives!

This next week my personal worship song is Beautiful Things by Gungor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1spkhp41ig4

Here’s my apple ITunes playlist if you’d like to download the songs! So far there are 36 songs and almost 3 hours 8 minutes worth of worship music! Some new, some old. Some well known, others not known at all. https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/worshipchallenge2021/pl.u-3oa4S0X1Xl

Cleaning House

Make Room by The Church Will Sing:
And I WILL make room for you – Jesus
To do whatever you want to
Here is where I lay me down
All my burdens all my crowns. This is my surrender.
Here is where I lay junk down
All my lies and all my doubts. This is my time to change.
Shake up the ground – of ALL my ambitions
Break down the walls – of ALL my religion
Your way IS better!

Since I began my #WorshipChallenge2021 last week I’ve been singing this song every day. I have varied the lyrics to work deeper on my heart. Deeper into me and my personal walk. Let me encourage you to sing and change lyrics to speak deeper into your heart. It’s not just about the lyrics that were written, but how God is speaking to you through those lyrics.

It’s not enough to just Make Room for Jesus to come in and change you. I heard a message a long time ago that we have to be very careful clearing our minds and hearts of things that have corrupted us, and then not being intentional about filling that space up with things that will glorify God and grow us a believers. By clearing space, it can often get filled with junk that will make us even more miserable than we were to begin with.

Oh Yahweh, I have made room in my heart, mind and soul. Fill it with You. Your presence. Your love. Your life. Your desires. Your wisdom.

This is my artistic interpretation of what God is doing in my heart! Come on in Jesus – you do YOU!

James 1:5 (TPT), “And if anyone longs to be wise, ask God for wisdom and he will give it! He won’t see your lack of wisdom as an opportunity to scold you over your failures but he will overwhelm your failures with his generous grace.”

My next worship song of meditative focus and private worship is Even Louder by The Church Will Sing (https://youtu.be/K_lmfWPV41Q)

Some of the lyrics:
Even if the drums stop beating
My soul will keep on singing
Even louder, even louder
Even when my eyes can’t see it
I’ll sing ’til I believe it
Even louder, even louder

Please consider joining me in this time! Feel free to share. You don’t have to give me credit. Let’s create a Body of Believers that are passionately and privately and corporately worshipping the Most High God!

Here’s my apple ITunes playlist if you’d like to download the songs! So far there are 34 songs and almost 3 hours worth of worship music! Some new, some old. Some well known, others not known at all. https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/worshipchallenge2021/pl.u-3oa4S0X1Xl

So, what song are you mediating on? How has God spoken to you, and what have you been saying to God?

#WorshipChallenge2021

I’ve decided to do something for the rest of 2021. Every week I will have a different worship song that I am going to focus on. I am going to listen to that worship song at least once every day. At the end of the week, I plan to journal what God has revealed to me during my private worship time.

I feel like we have lost, or maybe it’s just me, connection with the Lord. Maybe it’s the isolation. Maybe it’s Covid. Maybe it’s just Satan, and that’s probably more likely than anything else, but I feel like I haven’t taken time to very deeply worship God! Am I alone in this? I don’t think so!

Today I was listening to a song that is just really been penetrating deep into my heart, and I felt God just nudging me and telling me that I needed to spend some time in private worship.

What is private worship? For me it means a time where I can just listen to music and meditate on God and the goodness of God, but most importantly listen to his voice! How often do you take timeto actually listen to God?It’s so easy to ignore the voice of God and just focus inwardly, or focus on worldly needs.

Whether or not you want to worship with the same weekly song I choose, I want to challenge you to spend 5 to 10 minutes just singing and worshipping Christ every day! Let’s do this together! Let’s worship! Let’s see what God is going to reveal. Let’s celebrate today the great revelations we can anticipate!!

Make Room – By The Church Will Sing and Elyssa Smith & Community Music

The first song I’ve chosen is Make Room (https://music.apple.com/us/album/make-room-single/1510355933) by The Church Will Sing.

Here is where I lay it down
Every burden, every crown
This is my surrender
This is my surrender
Here is where I lay it down
Every lie and every doubt
This is my surrender

And I will make room for You
To do whatever You want to
To do whatever You want to
I will make room for You
To do whatever You want to
To do whatever You want to

So, who’s in? Let me know what song you’re meditating on this week! Let’s rejoice and worship together! God is so faithful and good!

#WorshipChallenge2021

EDIT –

About that #WorshipChallenge2021 … I have gotten some wonderful feedback and people that are excited to join me on this journey of anticipation and worship. So, I decided to make a worship playlist that will eventually include all my personal worship songs for the rest of 2021. #WorshipChallenge2021

I’d also love to include yours too. What songs have been life changers for you? Songs where God has spoken directly to your soul? Songs that have changed your life? Songs that have conveyed your deep love of Jesus? I would love for us to all be able to use this playlist as a way to connect with each other but most importantly connect with God!

Use the Map – SWC #6

My daughter and I have been on a few road trips. We drove from Ohio to Tennessee to Georgia to South Carolina and then back to Ohio. During this entire voyage my phone or the GPS in my car navigate our journey.

Often, I would miss a turn and hear the inevitable voice say – recalculating. Sometimes my daughter would see the signs before I could and she would help point out the way, but she was 13 so her directions weren’t always helpful or accurate.

And isn’t that the way with our own lives? We see the path before us and we pull out what we assume are appropriate guides only to discover that they can’t do the job.

We reference Google to tell us how to make a restaurant decision, how’s that worked out for you? We go to Web-MD to determine what is medically wrong with us, and it’s always life threatening. We go to YouTube to discover the best way to put on make up, only to discover that you need to spend an arm and a leg to afford all that stuff. We watch the food channel to learn how to cook but all their food seems pretentious.

We are faced with the figurative mountain before us filled with craters of lies, cliffs of destruction and potential avalanches of insults and instead of going to God for guidance we get out our phones and consult social media for advice.

Then we come to Psalm 119:165, “Those who love your instructions have great peace and do not stumble.” And that’s really at the heart of what’s going wrong in our lives. We spend all the time to consult everything else and yet we make God the last ONE we talk to. He is the only ONE that has all the answers. He is the only ONE that will give us great peace. And He is the only ONE that will be there for us 24/7, 365 days a year. He won’t ever need to recalculate the best way for us to go, because He already has our path mapped out for us – but only if we LOVE HIS INSTRUCTIONS.

 

Undeserved Privilege and Hope SWC #5

Many years ago I committed this passage to memory. I was going through a very challenging time. I was struggling with deep loneliness. I was longing so much to be in a relationship. I wanted to be married and have a family. But my singledom had reached an all time depressing high, or maybe that’s a low? It could have been both!

I was 32 years old and the last time I’d dated was when I was 27. Before that, I had never really dated anyone. I felt like I was being setup to hit another dating drought (and I wasn’t wrong) and that prospect ripped at the small amounts of contentment I was grasping onto. Not only that, I was struggling with a personal sin that seemed to attack me at every turn. How on earth could I dig myself out.

The thing is, I couldn’t dig out of anything at all.  If I tried to dig out of this pit of depression the enemy just seemed to pile on more despair. It was then that I began to pour myself into God’s Word and let God’s Word pour itself into me! Romans 5:1-5 gave me a hope that I couldn’t really comprehend, and yet I held onto it fiercely. I said these verses over and over and over again until they were embedded in my heart, mind and soul! 

As I re-read these verses and journaled them for days 4 &5, I was deeply overwhelmed by the “undeserved privilege” that I’ve been granted through faith in Christ and brought to this place today where I can “confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory.”

All aspects of God’s deep love and leading are an undeserved privilege, but one that we all are am offered on a minute by minute basis. Not only that – we can rejoice when problems (depression, sadness, health issues, or enter your own struggle here) and trials come our way. Why? Because those problems develop endurance, and endurance strengthens our character, and character gives us a confident hope in salvation. All roads lead to salvation when we set our minds on God and His purpose and plan for each of us! But that is not the end of His promise, when we reach that point of a deep hope, we can be assured that God’s Hope will not lead to disappointment. And how do we know that? Because God loved us so much that He sent us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with God’s love.

Do you feel His love? Do you know what that kind of hope feels like?

In the midst of my despair God gave me this passage. In the midst of my singleness God gave me a new perspective, that what I was going through today would mold me into exactly who He would need me to be in the future! And because of that, I found a new hope that took root deep within my soul. May you also find a new hope today and a joy that surpasses all earthly understanding!

Blessings – Sheri

Eternal SWC#3

Today is SWC #3 in our October challenge. It’s actually a continuation of the passage from day 1. When meditating on this passage I was again first drawn to what I felt was the primary message for me, that God grants joy as a direct result of His presence and the pleasure of knowing Him.

And then I saw that last word in verse 11… FOREVER.

Forever is a hard word to wrap your mind around. It means for all future time, for always, continually. The Hebrew word for forever is “olam” which means a “duration of time concealed or hidden” (Wilson’s Old Testament Word Studies by William Wilson). That means that Forever can’t even be put into words because it’s limit is UNKNOWN!!!!

Think about a joy that will never ever end. Think about a God that will show us the way of life, granting us the joy of His presence and the pleasures of living with Him FOREVER! I can’t even wrap my mind around that kind of promise.

In this world we will be disappointed by belongings, weather, sickness, family, friends and strangers. But, our God will never disappoint us. He promises to never leave our soul among the dead, and for me that means that God will never leave me to flounder! He is my constant and the only One I can eternally count on!

Today’s promise – my God’s love is ETERNAL! It will not waiver, even though I may fail Him, He will NEVER turn from loving me!

Confident and Cared For – SWC#1

Today is the first day of the October Scripture Writing Challenge (SWC). This month is all about understanding what God provides for all of us. It’s also about actively choosing to practice Peace and Choose Joy! Each passage that was selected for October has been prayed over. I encourage you to take time to meditate on each day’s verse. It’s amazing how much God has changed what jumps out at me from the verses even on a day to day basis. Today’s verse is no exception.

I chose Psalm 16:7-9 to begin this SWC because it screams JOY. “No wonder my heart is glad, and I rejoice (vs.9a).” As I meditated on this passage though the joy seemed to be overshadowed by something much more deep.

I can have CONFIDENCE in GOD because I am CARED for! When I truly and deeply understand that I am cared for, I can then be confident that I cannot be shaken by this world because even in the midst of unrest and cruelty – my God is above all of that. He is so far above all of the world’s noise that in my sleep he speaks to my heart so that my heart can speak to my head. He guides me, and when He guides me I can rejoice because my body rests in safety!!

Maybe you begin this SWC in the hopes that you will become more joyful and peaceful but my hope is that you begin to understand God on a much deeper level. Spend time listening to His word and voice, and you will NOT be disappointed!