As I talked about a couple of weeks ago, my head always has songs playing. Today it has two songs going. "What if His People Prayed" by Casting crowns and "Daisy" by Switchfoot. I know all of the lyrics to Daisy as it is on my main playlist however it has been years since I listened to the Casting Crowns song. I remember a trip to Indiana once where we listened to that cd on repeat for much of the drive. This is not a cd that just happened to be lying around, it is one that I use to actively listen to but somewhere though the years it dropped out of my rotation.
So I turned to google for the lyrics because the only part my head was playing over and over was the line "what if His people prayed" and as much as I tried I could not think of any other words in that song.
What I found when I looked up that lyrics was that there is a reason why I could not think of any of the other words... a song that I once listened to for hours now felt distant and like rhetoric. All I could think of is where God has brought me too and how that song now does not sit well with me. It is not that I don't have a deep relationship with Jesus, its that the song now feels shallow. A lot of time people see moving away from a song like that as loosing Jesus and all I could think about as I looked at those lyrics is that maybe I am starting to find Him, I just needed to get past the rhetoric of the American gospel. The imagery in my head is like the weeds and vines covering the true beauty.
What if His people prayed?
But what if they prayed with a different heart posture?
It can be so easy to fall into the trap of praying just for what you want and your will... I know because I can get stuck there very easily. It can get easy to get focused on a prayer request list like a Christmas list of wants and end up like a child just saying "give me." I am not saying don't ask God for anything, but what God keeps bringing up is heart posture.
What if we prayed not asking what God could do for us but asking God how He could reveal Himself to us and how we could join with Him in His will? What if we prayed for eyes to love like God loves? Man that makes fighting over things like prayer in school look a little silly.
Then there is Daisy. God gave me these songs together for a reason. "Daisy let it go, open up your fists, this fallen world, doesn't hold your interest, doesn't hold your soul, Daisy let it go." Sometimes we cling too much to this world.
What if His people prayed and prayed not to cling to things of this world but had and open fist?
I talked last song post about not wanting to go to church... but we did and I worshiped until my headband literally fell off of my head because I needed to be in a place of open hands.
I like to look like I always have myself together. I like to give the outward appearance of having it all figured out, but God is beautifully using this season in my life to show me how to have open hands.
Brent and I were talking last night about how going though book editing is hard for me, not because of my editor, she is on amazing person that I love, but because of years of school where if a teacher edited your paper with red pen it meant you did not know what you were doing. Those red marks showed your flaws and they felt like they scream off the paper that you are not good enough. I want this book to do exactly what God wants of it and to do that it needs to be edited because I can only bring it so far, I am too close to the stories and I have to trust in other people for help. I will admit the people that I am letting help with this at all is really small, my parents just found out recently that I was writing a book. The entire time I wrote the first draft only three people knew... Brent as my cheerleader, my editor, and Jamie to pray over it. I felt like as I was writing that is the only people God was asking me to tell however now I am slowly opening my hands to tell other about it and honestly that is scary. So while red marks are scary I am seeing the healing that God is doing in my heart through them this time and how He is showing me the beauty in red mark. He keeps saying that is is not my job to bring this book to the place He wants, its just my job to do the steps He is asking me. I am not a perfect writer and I have flaws however He can use me even in my non perfect place. He is teaching me to have open hands.
I also see Him right now loving me in little sweet ways that only He could know would be a hug to my soul. I grew up singing. I have talked about my years in choirs and musicals, and something that can happen if I am not careful is that worship can become really self focused because it can be easy to think about me in the situation in terms of singing. Singing is something that brings applause and attention and if we go into worship with the mindset of self promotion of how good I sound and what I can bring to worship it becomes an idol fast. I am reading Aaron Niequist's "The Eternal Current" right now and this section jumped out at me "In a church for the people- a church focused on exclusively on what the leadership can do for those who occupy the pew- worship means 'come hear our gifted artists provide a worship experience that will inspire and bless you. When it is done, you'll want to give them a round of applause and be glad you attended" I just looked at those words. I can so do that if I am not careful... however I can also take it to the opposite. I can become hard on myself and think that I suck at signing and that I should not even join in worship because I have nothing to offer. While it is true that I have very little to offer God in terms of the universe, it is also really disrespectful to him to say that the ability to sing is not something I should be grateful for. It goes back to a heart posture. Living in the tensions of life. Being thankful to be able to worship. I had been on a self loathing kick for a while (I don't think God is for self loathing just like He is not into self boasting) and last weekend I started singing "They will Know We are Christians by Our love" and I went to buy it on iTunes. Jilli was near buy and asked what I was doing and I told her that I was buying the song because it was stuck in my head. She asked me if I was going to sing with it and I said yes but in my head I was thinking "only because we are at home and only you all can hear me". Her response was "mom you will make the song more beautiful." She had no idea I had been beating myself up about singing, sometimes God give people the words you need to hear in your life, we just need to listen. We were in the parking lot of Perkins on Sunday after church and I was singing one of the songs from church while I was putting Lydia in the car and a random stranger came up and said she loved that I was singing that song. Those moments where God uses other people to remind us that He sees us. He had put a song on my heart for a reason and the least I could do was offer it back up to Him.
While I own the Casting Crowns song I am not adding it to my playlist of head songs... maybe I'll make a clip of just that line, but I am going to add Daisy to remind myself the heart posture and having an open hand is so important.
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