Why Wouldn’t I Choose Joy?

This past week God has been doing some radical things in my heart. I feel like He has been renewing my perceptions each and every day.

It started when I led squad worship for the first time this Monday. Leigha (my team leader, in case I haven't introduced her to you yet) asked me that afternoon if I would lead, and my first thoughts were, “There’s no way I can do that. I’m not very good at guitar, and I don’t know that many songs. I can’t even play bar chords. How am I supposed to be good enough to lead worship? What if I mess up and then everyone gets distracted and they can’t worship because of my being a distraction? What if I don’t know enough songs and it ends up being really short? There’s no way I can lead worship, Nick and Riley are both so much better than me. Ask one of them.”

My hesitation was apparent in my face and Leigha just looked at me and said, “That looks like a no. Are you not feeling well enough?” I told her no and let her in on what I was thinking and she just said, “You know there’s no pressure, but I know that you can do this.” That’s what it took for me to let the thought of actually leading worship into my mind. I agreed to consider it.

I went and sat on my bed, looked through my book of songs, and realized that I do know enough songs to be able to lead worship. So I told her I would, even though I was still crazy nervous and frazzled, and remained that way until just before worship started.

Leigha found me sitting on my bed still frantically trying to put a set list together about 10 minutes before we started, and she told me that the team leaders wanted to pray for me. Just one more thing to cram into this short ten minutes here, I thought. But that was the best thing that could have happened to me in that moment.
They prayed peace and confidence over me and that’s what God delivered. He poured into me, through them, that this was just like any other time when I worship by myself, but this time our squad was just joining in. He assured me that it didn’t matter if I messed up or even what I sounded like. The squad wasn’t worshipping me. We were worshipping the LORD together. And so we did. We worshipped hard that night. God was DEFINITELY present. I think we all felt His Spirit overwhelming the room.

And ever since that night of leading worship, I can’t stop worshipping Him. Any free time I have is spent with my guitar, singing praises at the top of my voice and at the quietest whisper, always in awe of His majesty and His love for us. My life is worship. I choose to live my life, every second of it, in worship. I was made to worship the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Prince of Peace, the Wonderful Counselor, the Heavenly Father, Yahweh, Abba, I Am, my Daddy. All my life, I live as a worship to Him. Why wouldn’t I?