Where to Find Break-Through When the Day Grows Dark?

I remember it clearly. Faces planted. The presence of a God captivating souls completely, with peace.

Humility hitting the congregation like a wave. True repentance flowing from grace…not bought or sold or earned from even the most religious in that place.

A quickening of the spirit, songs rose, and chains were broken, easily. 

Still…

The world outside those walls revival was experienced in, fought with legalism, rules, and psychology.

They tried to “strong-arm” god, somehow trying to earn their way into individual freedom…

Many continued working exhaustively trying to slay their own personal demons, to no avail.

But there, we were lost in time, caught inside His Holy Fire, set apart and transformed by and through His work that gave us life and freedom.

The sanctuary captured by hours of worship, twenty-four hours a day of prayer and fasting.

It was like His presence was a glue that drew many, those willing to be lost in love…never wanting to leave.

It was a place where healing and redemption came….Not because any of us were “good”, but because Jesus became a servant who has grace for the weary, a Savior drawn to the down-trot and needy, like a moth to the flame.

Scripture reminding me, even now as I write this, “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom”…

Yet, why is it we look for healing in another, our answers from Oprah, questions to be answered from “google” or Facebook…

Searching for our healing or our purpose, any other place, other than Jesus?

Still lately, God has been branding me of this idea that worship is more about our hearts being in submission to Him, and is less about posture, any kind of “formula”, or some magic, ten-step praise session that somehow lures a far of god, near.

God historically simply longing for our abandoned praise; hearts and minds to be filled with His great name. Him seeking a people desiring to please Him and Him only…far above all things.

Yet, while a legal battle is threatening, learning disabilities surface in children, and we are confronted with a mom who wants to abandon her children…

He reminds me that shouts are what made the walls of Jericho fall. It is in the heralding God where the doors to our prison cells are opened.

So, I praise Him because He is worthy. 

I praise Him not because of what He gives, or because my life is filled with personal wishes and grand platforms triumphant for others to see…

I have learned, as the Israelite’s teach me…

• We can’t just serve Him when we see the seas part, when He frees us from slavery found in our own personal Egypts.
• We don’t love Him simply because He has provided mana from heaven, or quail from the sky.

We can worship Him at all times…

• When we can’t yet see the promised land
• When there are giants in the land, and..
• Before our physical eyes can see water gushing from, The Rock of All Ages.

We can use the same weapon Paul had when He worshiped in that prison cell, Silas as God opens up confinements, voices rising even louder in the trials.

I will see Him as great, not because I can use Him to get my way, or even because He has redeemed me from the grave…but because He is holy, and good, just, and enduring, because He was and is and always will be, the only one worthy.

And isn’t it when fire’s rise, He is there with us, saying…

“Take your shoes off. You are standing on Holy ground”. And…

• What if we made our homes places of praise instead of thrones of technology?
• What if we gave honor to His Great Name, in plenty or in want, in abundance or lack?
• What if we showed He is trust-worthy worshiping Him even on darkened days, when hours drawn nigh, when the light is betrayed by the sin in other people’s lives…
• What if we stopped looking around, and fixed our eyes on Him. Really grasping and digesting the power found in His unswerving goodness?
• What if love rained down and we truly couldn’t get enough of Him?
• What if praise and worship was our response in literally every circumstance? And we knew the power of humbly resting at His feet?

I remember sweetly, and return quite often to that place where God moved, worship flooded the room with a Savior whose love consumes us until we could not breathe…

And even now as the sounds are silenced, the building’s themselves become irrelevant….Trails still turn me to press into Him, worshiping purposefully…

Knowing my God is the same, yesterday, today, and always.

And if the story starts with worship, and ends in Revelations, with many singing, “Holy, holy, holy”…

How much more should we fill the gap with praise?

And what if we intentionally placed ourselves low, and purposefully raised up our voices to The Name Above All Names, joining the great clouded of witnesses…

What might change?

• Don’t angels still shatter walls during sounds of praise?
• Don’t prison cells still give way, when we lift up His name?
• Don’t we turn into His Bride clothed in white, when our eyes shift to His face?

And don’t we join heaven, simultaneously heaven piercing earth, every time we vocalize, “Jesus”, surrendering our own fame with every shout of His goodness?

His face, a beckon of grace. His ways a compass in the dark, declaring, “this is the way, will you walk in it?”

Knowing victory is His.

Seeing somehow more clearly, every time we loose ourselves in abandoned praise?