“The heart of worship”- by Sarah Taylor

I had led worship at my home church for years and loved every second of it. It was always a great time to engage others and facilitate an atmosphere of praise to the Lord. To be frank, I have had a relatively smooth life. I had never had a horrible, tragic life event; I grew up in a solid Christian home and had not seen a lot of personal hardship. There were so many reasons to praise and worship the Lord for all the joy I had seen in life. However, about two weeks before I moved in to college, my whole world was flipped upside down. My mom was diagnosed with cancer. I was heartbroken beyond compare, but I have seen the Lord move radically in this situation through that heartbreak. I have truly learned that worship is not a time to only praise God when life is going your way. I truly experienced first-hand that leading worship is not just standing on the stage on Sundays singing some songs with your hands raised. This year, worship has looked like like praying on my knees, crying out in desperation to the Lord. Worship has looked like praising God for His goodness and trusting Him even when life was not perfect, easy, or predictable. Worship has looked like seeing His goodness and grandeur even on the hardest of days, being even more thankful for the joys in life, and trusting His ultimate, perfect plan even if it contradicted what I would hope for. Worship has looked like allowing God to use my mom’s diagnosis to show others who are going through the same thing that God is still good despite the hurt life may bring, despite the sickness, despite the pain.

I learned that you can’t effectively worship if you don’t truly know the depths of the God you’re worshiping; and you definitely can’t lead others in worship if you haven’t fully been there for yourself and discovered who He is. We will never know everything about God— He is so powerful that we aren’t capable of understanding every aspect of who He is, but even that reveals that there is ALWAYS more to uncover. We should never be satisfied or content in our development of our relationship with the Lord— that creates a stagnant, prideful lifestyle where we come to believe that we already know all we need to know. My eyes have been opened this year, more than ever, how radically life changing His Word is—that getting to know Him isn’t just reading a couple verses or even seventeen chapters to get it done and then go about your day. Getting to truly know the God of the universe requires studying His word— ACTUALLY studying—as if you’re taking the MCAT, studying to become a doctor. The best thing is that this is not burdensome or boring; it’s exciting, riveting and LIFE-ALTERING. His word is perfect, flawless, and gives us abundantly more than we deserve to get to know the character of God, and if we are just skimming over that, we limit ourselves from experiencing the fullness of God that He made possible through an actual, intentional relationship with Him.

I have seen that He is so worthy of all the worship, glory, honor, and praise— no matter what life looks like. He is still the same God when life is going smoothly and when it seems like the ground itself is crumbling. Worship is not just a once-a-week ritual; it should be a lifestyle, a constant heart posture. When we see how GOOD God is, in every circumstance, we see how worthy He is to receive that praise. The closer we get to God, we realize how much bigger and more powerful He is than we could imagine, and we realize how tiny we are. I’ve seen that worship has absolutely nothing to do with me and my abilities, but it has everything to do with actually realizing how tiny and insignificant I am in the grand scheme of things and that the God of the universe invited me in and allows me to catch a glimpse of His incredible glory. Now THAT is something to be excited about. That’s something to sing about. That’s something to dance about. That’s something to share with others— whether on a stage, in a class, on a phone call, at your home, or wherever the Lord leads you. I want my life to be a testimony of worship to how incredibly grand my God is in the good and the bad of life the same. He truly does work it all for His good and His glory (even if it’s different than our own), and that’s something to praise Him for.
Romans 8:28, Psalm 30:11, Romans 11:36