Worship Is My Weapon

So I’ve talked about some of the ways the Lord has redeemed bringing my camera on the race. This was one of two items I seriously questioned whether or not I should bring with me on this roughly year long trip around the world. The second was my guitar.

A little over five years ago I asked my mother to buy me a guitar for Christmas because I really wanted to learn how to play and was determined I could teach myself. She came through on her end of the deal. Unfortunately I did not. Ignorant me thought, wow I’m really good at guitar hero, playing a real guitar couldn’t be much more difficult than that right? Boy, was I wrong. 

Many times throughout the last five years I attempted to teach myself chords, notes on each of the strings, strum patterns, and songs. Nothing ever stuck. I was a wimp and used the excuse of the strings hurt my fingers to never let myself build up the necessary callouses on my fingertips to actually play anything. I struggled with chord fingerings, saying my fingers couldn’t form the correct fingerings. I made myself believe a lie that I am rhythmically challenged because I couldn’t figure out the correct strum patterns. And the list of excuses went on and on… until COVID quarantine happened.

Quarantine hit and I suddenly found myself with more time on my hands than I ever expected to have in my adult life. I was still singing in church for our online services and constantly listening to worship music throughout my days working from home. This led to me picking up that rusty old guitar with a determination to learn a song.

So I did. I learned my first song in April of 2020 and my second a couple months after. 

And then another void hit.

I dropped my guitar for another three months. I didn’t learn new songs. I didn’t practice the two that I had taught myself. I did absolutely nothing. Until September rolled around and the Lord presented me with one of the coolest worship opportunities I’ll probably ever have. After hiking to the top of a mountain peak in Zion National Park to watch the sunset we met some awesome friends who had hauled their guitar up to the top. We noticed them playing worship songs and joined in the praise. Before I even knew what was happening I somehow had the guitar in my hands and was belting out the two songs that I somehow managed to remember. Never in my life had I expected to be leading a group in worship atop a mountain looking over God’s astounding creation.

This experience left me with a worship high and in between the months of that instance and World Race launch I attempted to learn more and more songs but nothing really stuck. It wasn’t until about a month before launch, on a day which I was sabbathing, that the Lord wrecked me in a time of worship I had while just playing music through my speaker. The songs I played hit me hard, speaking truth to many of the lies and insecurities I had believed for most of my life. So I picked up my guitar and those few songs came easy. 

 Now comes the tough decision. With just a few more songs under my belt, would it really be worth it to lug my big, heavy guitar around the world for a year? So much of me was telling myself “no.” “You barely know how to play anything” or “There’s so many other better musicians on the squad” or “You’ve never lead worship before, might as well leave it to someone more experienced” were all things I was telling myself to talk myself out of bringing it. 

In hopes of learning how to play this year, I decided to bring my guitar anyway. And the Lord has reconfirmed this decision time after time during my first two months on the Race.

Right from the get-go our ministry host, Hannah, stressed worship as a vital part of our ministry time in Costa Rica. It didn’t hurt that our base was an open concept building with incredible acoustics. We also have a squad that so loves to worship and is always calling each other higher in leading in a way that’s obedient to what the Lord places on our heart. 

In the first week, I found myself with the opportunity to lead worship during our squad church service at the base, as we were still fulfilling our time period of quarantining. Shortly after, we began a new ministry project in the Central Park of the town and Hannah was determined that before we started any work and while we were working that we cover the park in worship and prayer. Any guesses who she put in charge of facilitating this? Yeah, I wouldn’t have been my first choice either but she must’ve heard something from the Lord much more clearly than I had. Similar to the mountain story, never in my life would I have guessed that I’d be responsible for facilitating worship at a park for an entire day… but it was a magnificent day of worship filled with singing, prayer, and sharing the gospel with locals who approached us with questions about what we were doing. From here on the Lord gave me multiple other opportunities to lead worship within our squad and even assist at the local church in Jacó.

While these more public, group worship times have been a sweet testimony to God’s goodness, the true redemption in worship for me has been my time alone with the Lord. Day after day throughout our time in Jacó I found myself choosing to sit alone with the Lord and my guitar. It’s hard for me to put it into words but there’s something wildly different about worshipping, just you and the Lord. Each song I learned was a testimony to the way the Lord touched my heart in some way, shape, or form. He very quickly turned the wreckage of personal conviction or speaking sweet truths over me into beautiful songs of praise. He always left me with the feeling that my worship to Him carried a sense of power and authority. He gave me the confidence to believe that when I worshiped, the heavens were being called down to earth, and lives around me were changing for His glory.

I’ll leave you with the wise words of Jonathan David Helser: 

“There’s a song written on your heart only you can sing

And when you sing enemies flee

When you sing prison walls come falling down

When you sing heaven invades the earth

So just begin to lift up your hallelujah

Raise it like a banner

Raise it like a flag

Raise it in the middle of the storm

Let it rise, let it rise

Like a symphony to the King

Everything to You, Jesus

We raise it all.”