just one light can spark a flame
~ f r o m t h e a r c h i v e ~
dear friend,
Hey there! For today’s love letter, I wanted to share a lil’ story. A story of obedience. A story of not submitting to bad authority. A story of renewal, growth, and change.
A few days ago, I was at church early Sunday morning for praise music practice before Bible study time. Before I’d left my house, I looked over the predicted song list. It looked pretty okay; mostly hymns, which I’m totally fine and familiar with.
However, everything took a turn for the worse once I actually got to church to practice the songs — the songs that had been changed entirely.
You see, a few months ago before this whole ordeal happened, I watched this video and, shortly after, I viewed this video, both concerning the topic of mainstream worship and if it has a place in the church (think: Hillsong, Bethel Music, Elevation, Jesus Culture, etc.). Ever since then, I’ve gone through a sort of reconstruction from what I was raised to believe worship is to discovering what worship ACTUALLY is. Therefore, after watching these videos and truly praying and reading the Word to discern what I should do and where my convictions lie, I’ve since listened to only non-controversial, (mostly Shane & Shane and Housefires) worship music in order to give God praise through song. I won’t dive deeper into mainstream worship and how terrible it is here; if you’d like to learn more about that, I HIGHLY recommend watching the videos I linked above! ^^
ANYWAY. For the song lineup, 2/3 of the songs were good! I Ioved them, some good old sound hymns. Then, the dreaded song rolled around, and I had a choice:
I could sing the song in order to not cause any division — going against my conscious and ultimately sinning against God within my own heart — because the truth of the band that wrote said song had been revealed to me and I vowed to not listen to or sing their songs ever again.
OR
I could *possibly* stir up trouble as I turned my microphone off and stood there on stage, listening to the other two women sing the song just fine.
If you know anything about me, you KNOW I hate drawing attention to myself. I don’t like rocking the boat; I hate causing friction when everything is going smoothly. I avoid conflict.!
However, at this moment, I knew I couldn’t stand divided against myself! As I was literally standing in God’s house, on HIS stage, I knew there was ultimately only one choice.
And so, ~ feeling alone,~ I did it.
Or, rather, I DIDN’T do it.
I chose to turn my microphone off, not singing the song because I wanted to please God and not offer worship I KNEW He wouldn’t accept from me.
And even though I felt alone, I knew I wasn’t.
My heart slowly raced less and less as I noticed that my fellow youthian didn’t play a single chord on his guitar as we practiced, too.
I’m not alone in this, I thought. I smiled to myself, knowing I had made the right choice not to do something against my own conscious — against the Holy Spirit Himself.
Then, as the song ended, something amazing happened.
The tech leader asked me if the batteries in my microphone were dead. “No,” I replied.
“I just noticed you weren’t singing that last song,” she said.
“Yeah, I just personally don’t feel comfortable singing it,” I answered, still trying to keep the boat rocking as little as possible, not wanting it to be completely flipped over if I said too much or the wrong thing.
She just gave me a close-lipped smile, and as the other two women on stage practiced the song one more time, it came to an end once again.
“What do we think? Thoughts?” The main praise music leader asked the rest of us.
“Oh y’all sounded great! But I wasn’t singing,” I simply replied.
“Yeah, I understand. I know who wrote it, no worries, Natalie,” she said.
Then, just as I walked offstage and took a sip of my coffee, I heard the main praise music leader say, “I think I’ll switch that song with How Great Thou Art. It just flows better with the rest of the songs.”
I suppressed a huge smile as my gentle rocking of the boat, with the help of my fellow youth in the band, made us completely turn the ship around in a direction that glorified God all the more.
The one thing I want you to take away from this, dear friend, it would be this:
Don’t quench the Spirit. If He tells you to or not to do something, based on His perfect Word and truth revealed to you, DO WHAT HE TELLS YOU TO DO. Don’t let yourself be divided any more than you already are! Remember, dear friend: we are not our own. We belong to a holy God, worthy of the utmost, highest praise and worship and glory — more than we could ever give Him.
Jesus says,
That is my story about how just one spark can light a burning, glowing, God-glorifying flame
much love & more,