If you follow my World Race blog, then you have probably already seen this post. It’s probably an unconventional way to start this, my new Adventures Staff blog. But this is the season I have been in and the truth of where I was when I started my new job. God has already been working on my heart, through new community, rediscovering my purpose, and personal revelation. It is still a path I am walking, and if you’d like, you can walk it with me.
Since December, I’ve been struggling with worship. Like, really struggling, in a way I never have before. It started with just a few questions.
Why are all these songs about how I feel?
Why do they only talk about God in relation to who He is to me, not just the truth of who He is?
Do we even realize what we are singing about and asking for, or are we just repeating these words because they feel good?
My biggest question was about the glory of God. We sing and sing about God revealing His glory and showing us His face, but really, do we understand what that means? How extreme of a request this could be?
I kept asking these questions. I researched. I read every scriptural account I could find. I sought the wisdom and opinions of friends. But I could not come to any solid conclusion, with the exception of one. It was all too big for me to understand. So instead of asking for something I did not understand, I quit singing.
In my search, I began reading Desiring God by John Piper with a friend. This is my response to chapter 3. It’s not pretty, but it’s real.
On page 79, Piper (referencing John 6) says the “The presence of God’s Spirit in your life takes away the frustrated soul-thirst and turns you into a fountain where others can find life.” I love this picture. I desire it for my life. But the reality is that for the last few months or so, my fountain has been more of a leaky, broken faucet that barely trickles. He says on 81 that “Worship must engage emotions and thought.” I know mine has involved a lot of thought. A lot of analyzing. A lot of searching. But in my searching and confusion and brokenness, all of which CAN be good, worshipful things, I got lost somewhere, and it became my response to turn off the emotion.
I can look back and see moments of deep, Christ-centered Joy. I see times when my spirit was “made alive and sensitive by the quickening of the Spirit of God.” There have been times when He has brought me to tears or to laughter. But when I ask myself, “What truly has been the posture of my heart in this season?” my answer hurts me.Because I see a heart that is dry and weak, hardened and cold. I don’t know when it happened or how it started. I’ve been pouring over scripture for months. I was praying continuously. I wasn’t just going through the motions. I was seeking Him in every area of my life. So how did I get to this place of such vast disconnection?
One of my coworkers said something in passing the other day that struck me. He said “We all have seasons where we must go into the wilderness with God. But you can’t stay there. You have to bring it back.”
I think I got lost in the wilderness somewhere, and I’ve found myself in a scary place. I went out with Him, looking for answers and looking for Him, but when He called me back, I stayed behind. I got lost. My wilderness became a desert.
But Piper’s description of that place gives me hope (97). “[W]here all genuine worship starts, and where it often returns from a dark season is the barrenness of soul that scarcely feels any longing, and yet is still granted the grace of repentant sorrow for having so little love… He is also glorified by the spark of anticipated gladness that gives rise to the sorrow we feel when our hearts are lukewarm. Even in the miserable guilt we feel over our beast-like insensitivity, the Glory of God shines.”
I am far too easily pleased. I’ve settled for this place of emptiness, a lukewarm routine. I find joy and peace and strength in the small moments without letting it work to transform the posture of my heart. This lukewarm water has seeped into every area of my life. My fountain is barely trickling.
A speaker I was listening to said something the other day about “when you aren’t feeling it”. “Who cares what you feel?!” he said. “So what if you don’t feel like it?! Maybe the areas where you struggle to have positive feelings are the places God is trying to show you that you need refinement, that you need restoration. Maybe you don’t feel like it, but He promises to step in there, that His power is made perfect In Weakness. He loves to work in the places we don’t feel like it because that’s where He can show up the most.”
Well, I don’t feel like it. I feel weak. I feel broken.
It makes me want to throw off everything and crawl to the feet of God. I desperately want and need to be in His presence in a real and even tangible way. God, make your power perfect in my weakness! I want to walk through the seasons of brokenness if it means finding Him again in a way that is deeper. I’m begging him to reawaken my passion, to soften my heart. Perhaps this is what I needed to learn from all of my questions and searching about revelations of the glory of God. Maybe I don’t know what it means exactly to ask Him to reveal His glory, but if this is what it’s like to live without it, I want nothing of it.
