Habit #2 Worship

In seventh grade, my middle school took us to Virginia for a wilderness adventure camp. The camp was AMAZING! We did so many incredible things, aka mountain biking, canoeing, kayaking, zip lining, camping, rock climbing, ultimate-frisbee-ing, etc etc... 

My adrenaline was so pumped every year we went to this camp, that even as a 12 year old I would wake up early and go running with the counselors before the day began. There was only one problem with the camp — they let middle school boys in. 

What is it about middle school that makes boys go bat-shit crazy? 

Honestly, middle school boys are the worst! ESPECIALLY when you're a middle school girl. They're like frat boys, sans the excessive drug use (unless ritalin counts). For instance, take my second year at wilderness camp: Every morning the boys would wake up at 6 am, and begin a deafening-never-ending-round of "Rise and shine and give God the glory glory!!!" Where did they learn this? We didn't go to a Christian school. All of their families were Catholic, so I knew from my own church that not many Catholic kids learn those cute bible songs like other denominations. In any event, one of them picked it up, and for a week we were woken up earlier and earlier, by the not-so-mellifluous voices of tone-deaf-tweens.

To this day, I still remember thinking if this is worship, count me out.

That's before I became a Christian. The next year a friend brought me to Youth Group, and life as I knew it changed forever. Suddenly giving God the 'glory glory' any hour of the day or night didn't seem so painful. Youth group made me fall in love with bands such as Jars of Clay, Relient K, David Crowder Band and Audio Adrenlaine. The closest I've ever felt to God was at a David Crowder concert, one "Rock The Universe." It was as if God had physically brought the heavens closer to earth, and I could feel the divine moving in a out of my body — it was praise on every level, mental and physical. I remember walking out of the stadium and screaming into the air, "I am a Christian!" It sounds silly because a good 80% of this country calls themselves Christian; but to me, this was a radical profession that I was actually invested in following Christ and being solely identified as His. 

As I said in my first post on habits, worship can mean a lot of different things, and they don't all have to have a Christian label for them to be an offering to God. I think "The Fray" put it best when asked why they went from a Christian to secular label, responded:

 

Worship doesn't have to  be limited to a certain art form, or even certain vocabulary — God gave us the ability and the tools to create, thus in our use of them She is intrinsically worshiped as the giver of every good thing. Even creative people who use their abilities to deny the creator, such as atheist author Christopher Hitchens who died this week, are creating on borrowed talent. 

So when I think of worship, I don't necessarily think of Contemporary Christian music — and neither should you. 

However, for the sake of this habit, I decided to solely listen to Christian-identified praise music for a week. 

I found I kept being drawn back to one song in particular: It's called "I Wonder," and it's on Leeland's new CD "The Great Awakening." This is a beautiful song... both the melody and lyrics bring you to a place beyond yourself.

During a particularly bleak night this past week, I found myself blasting it as I drove to the beach to be alone and pray. The chorus get's me every time; 

"Jesus Christ, 

you bled your love,

layed down yourself and gave me life. 

In naked shame you hung and you were lifted high, 

here I lay in awe and wonder...

I am afraid,

for no one's ever sacrificed and loved me this way.

So on my face I fall under your heavy grace, 

here I lay in awe and wonder...

and I wonder."

The last verse resonates with me so much. I've been loved by the people around me, but I have never known a love like this one. And sometimes when I get sad about being single, I think about some of my boyfriend obsessed friends, and think "they are settling for a love WAY less then I get to receive everyday." Not to say that couples can't also know God's love, but certainly when you obsess over any relationship apart from Christ, you're settling for a lesser kind of love. And it's scary knowing the price God payed to show me his love, and the responsibility that carries to pass it on to others. But that, I think, is the power of habitual worship. It reminds us that we should love because we were first loved. Worship turns the attention from "us" to God. It gets us out of our own heads. Worship reminds us we're just one tree in a huge forest, one brush stroke in a bigger picture.... Worship teaches us that it's God's world and we're just living in it. And when we worship, and receive anew the freedom from self, we're able to see the world through God's eyes. And once you've done that, all you want is to live in that awareness forever. May it be so.

I hope you'll watch this studio recording of Leeland's "I Wonder"