Receiving Worship

2024 has been a year of worship.

I’ve always struggled with worship. As a child, I read slowly and struggled to keep up with the lyrics. But it wasn’t just that. I didn’t connect. I wonder if I even really understood the difference between worship and singing. As I grew up, I overthought, I didn’t like the repetition, I got distracted, I didn’t feel God’s presence or really like I was offering anything up to Him. I refused any action of worship that I felt pressure to do, and yet I didn’t feel like I knew what I was supposed to do. I settled for the understanding that worship just wasn’t my thing. It wasn’t my way of connecting to God. 

In college God brought me to the beauty of repetition, He taught me how to worship, He taught me to seek His face and enjoy that time sandwiching the message. In 2023 I got to experience a profound move of worship at Asbury University, and my heart remembered that experience in worship afterwards. But God went deeper. God continued to grow me in worship, but this is the year He’s turned my heart towards it. Not to be present in it but to long for it. 

I’ve sought out worship music where I wouldn’t have before, and while I’m really not a person who plays music a ton anyway (worship or not), I’ve seen the difference between worshipping and singing. 

It’s also been the year of worship nights. A woman at my church invited me to one at her house, and though I’d been to plenty of worship nights before, I fell in love. I felt the intimacy, the beauty, the stillness, and I longed for more. It became a vision for the life I’d like to live, the home I’d like to create. And since then, God has given me so many opportunities for worship. I’ve gone from having a few a year to sometimes a few a month. 

And in the place of worship, sometimes all of these new lessons pour out of me. I feel the connection, the overflow, the intimacy, the stillness. Sometimes though, I still feel disconnected and distracted. But what I’ve learned is that God is the same, and I treasure showing up to seek Him. I treasure getting away with Him for an evening in a community of believers and expecting Him to show up and move whether I feel that emotionally or not. And I know He uses it all. 

Recently I went to a worship night feeling heavy, and I left feeling heavy. I didn’t feel disconnected from God, but I also didn’t feel the closeness. But that worship lingered in the rain that fell that night into the morning, and I woke to it beating against my window. I woke to the stillness and lingering presence—a presence which is always there but shows up in a particular way in places of worship. I felt God’s nearness so beautifully. 

And it struck me. Worship is always something we receive. It’s when we “do” that we disconnect. That we get distracted. We can only have an overflow of that which has been poured over us; worship doesn’t come from us but as a result of Christ in is. It is our spirit moving to His presence, His goodness, His faithfulness. 

And it’s no wonder that God has taught me how to linger in worship the very year that He’s been teaching me to rest and to receive. Because that’s ultimately what worship is. Resting in Him, receiving His goodness and nearness, releasing our ability, our striving, our doing, relying on Him for our everything. Responding to Him.

That’s worship. That’s what it all boils down to. And it’s the same in times of joy when praise pours from our lips and in seasons of suffering when all we can do is receive. Because all we can ever do is receive Him.

That’s what God has been teaching me. Who knew worship would be the place I got to live it out? Who knew the reason I never got into worship was because I tried to start with pouring out instead of overflowing from Him? I’m so thankful that He is my teacher. And I’m so thankful that on this journey of resting and receiving and responding and relying, He’s tuned my heart to linger in worship to Him.