The sun rises for a new morning. She rises for yet another Sunday morning and all that it holds. The weekly routine sets in; get ready, breakfast, church. She walks in and sits into the back as the pastor adresses the congregation greeting them. He prays opening the service. She stares at the floor and acknowledges the shuffling feet of the praise band walking up to their instruments. He ends the prayer and the songs begin. They begin with a classic praise song one she has sang a million times, and continues to sing without a second thought. During the message her thoughts are just as scattered. She flips through her Bible looking at different passages searching from something but unable to find it. The messages ends, it is communion Sunday. The pastor prays and a song begins as the elders pass out the pieces of bread. A voice in her head whispers, "How free are you? Kneel and praise Me."
She is reminded of something someone said to her once, "We have perfect freedom in Christ and here in the United States we are not confronted with persecution yet on Sunday morning when you hear kneel and praise Me, lift your hands high and exalt My name...we are paralyzed. What will the person behind me think or will the guy standing next to me give me a weird look? How free are you?"
The song ends and the pastor read from Matthew 26, "While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, "Take and eat; this is my body." She ate. The next song began for the juice to be past and again, "How free are you? Kneel and praise Me. " She sat down on her chair thinking surely this would be enough. "Are you not free? Some who praise Me will and have been persecuted for this and you only sit because you are worried of someone's opinion? Are you not free?" She fell to the floor ashamed. The pastor finished reading out of Matthew 26. The praise band led the congregation into another song. Another song she had sang several times before but this time it came alive because she was broken and humbled.
2 comments:
How free? Free indeed
Yet
How enslaved are we?
See we were first slaves to sin then when we were set free from the slaver to sin we were made slaves to righteousness. Rom 6
So when we are not willing to be obedient, in your scenerio what was hindering the obedience, fear of what people might think, What is that? It is the same old origanal and continual sin which rears its ugly head in our lives over and over......... Pride
Funny I have had very similar conversations in my own head. Strangly I have not expressed it quite the same before, could that be fear as well.
Then of course there have been the times of stepping out.
For when we come to the point of understanding that it is not just the singing that God wants or requires it is ultimately a broken and contrite heart Ps 51 so whether we sing stand praise shout kneel it is all dependent upon our inner heart wrestlings with our Father. Ps 52 cont. For He has delivered ME and I will proclaim His praise and will sing joyfully and I will teach transgressors HIS ways
Thank you for your honesty and your realness it is both exciting and inspiring.
i love this.
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