Wholehearted Worship

For most of my life, I was that person that looked at you like you were crazy if you raised your hands during worship, but I changed my mind when I found myself subconsciously lifting my hands. It isn’t crazy at all, it’s just a symbol of wholehearted surrender, or what I thought was wholehearted surrender. I was still self conscious of what I looked like and if everyone else had their hands raised, I did too, even if I didn’t feel it and I definitely wasn’t going to be the only one raising my hands. It wasn’t until a few days ago that what I thought was whole hearted worship, was really only giving God the parts that I was comfortable letting him play with for as long as I thought he was handling it well.

 

Our first real day in Puerto Rico, we decided to go to the beach just to see what happened and we met a boy named Carlos through a game of football. We played for a while and he invited us back to his pool where we met two ladies who we later came to know as our tias or aunts. They were so full of joy and I knew it was joy, because it was radiating from them constantly, not just when things were going perfect and we were having a good time. They were always so generous and energetic in everything we did, nothing could bring them down. You couldn’t help but smile when you were around them, you always felt so at ease around them, and most of the time you could be yourself without being embarrassed. For some reason that still wasn’t enough for me, but God knows me enough to know that I am stubborn and it takes a few examples for things to sink in.

 

Our tias go to Vida Abundance Iglesias and invited us to go with them, so we went both Wednesdays we were here and joy was very clear. The worship songs were in Spanish, but I did my best to sing along and at first I was so self-conscious. I was bouncing my knee to keep rhythm and focusing on getting the words right, because I was sure that everyone was staring at me and offended by me trying to sing words that I couldn’t understand, but as usual I was wrong. I looked around and saw something that blew me away. At the front of the church some of the youth girls were dancing, which was pretty cool and unusual. But as I looked around I noticed everyone was dancing and clearly focused on praising our King. I also noticed the massive smiles on their faces, once again, something that can only be described as joy. I saw it again on Sunday when we went to a church in San Sebastian that was probably the craziest and loudest place I’ve ever been. During worship, people are yelling the lyrics, dancing all over the place, and playing random instruments, such as tambourines and what looked like to be wooden bananas, strummed by a back scratcher. There it was again, that joy and the contagious smile, but it wasn’t possible that everyone in there had a reason to be happy.

 

It was on this trip that I learned that you can worship God in anything and it’s more than just “giving Him the glory,” it’s about giving him yourself. I have never been one to be bold or daring, but I decided to take little risks along the way and now I can say that I bit a live fish, licked a lizard, and surrendered myself to God for the first time. I’m sure you can clearly see how the three things relate, but I’ll clarify just to be sure. We played this game called odds on the trip and it was lots of fun, but you sometimes had to do some interesting things. I heard Alysa explaining it and decided that was definitely not for me, but the next day, I found myself volunteering to bite a live fish in place of someone else. It was really really gross, but it was also really cool, because it was something I would never have done in my life. I thought it was a one time thing until about an hour later I had my tongue pressed to a lizard, squealing and giggling like a little girl. I loved the feeling it gave me, doing something that was scary and probably looked weird, so I tried to apply that in my faith. When we were at church, I sang, loud and danced around; I probably butchered the lyrics and looked like a weirdo, but for a few minutes I gave God total control of my life and I felt as light as a feather. It was definitely scary, but it’s definitely something I am going to do more. I hope you will try it too, even if it’s just for one song. Trusting God is like working out, the more you trust him, or the more you exercise the muscle and the stronger or more confident you become.