Friday, July 10, 2009

Fortunately, It Is Impossible to Rock Out Too Hard for God

God of wonders beyond our galaxy
You are holy, holy
The universe declares Your majesty
You are holy, holy

Steve Hindalong and Marc Byrd
"God of Wonders"
New Song Cafe, Vol. 1 (2003)

It's Friday, so it was my turn to be "on the wall" with Marvin's Friday morning team at WVIHOP doing our Harp and Bowl set. Things didn't start off well this morning, as some personal nonsense had me get there about twenty minutes after I normally do and had me in kind of a sour mood. They continued to go poorly in their start, as we struggled for about ten minutes to figure out why my guitar wasn't making sound through the loudspeakers only to realize I had my volume turned all the way down. Fortunately, though, that was rock bottom.

I had so much fun out there today. We started off with God of Wonders, which is a song that I've practiced for quite some time alone here at home, and I'm pretty comfortable with. We also did Mighty to Save in our opening three worship songs, another song that I'm really pretty decent with. The net result is that, despite my mood coming in and my fumbling with my stupidity about amplifiers, I settled in and got pretty comfortable with my playing.

While I was there, the Holy Spirit did some work in me. He dropped a couple of verses onto my heart that ultimately had a huge impact on dealing with my issues from the morning later in the day. More importantly, though, the Spirit lifted the burden from me, and I was able to throw myself into worshipping God through my guitar rather than worrying about life. So now I'm not only comfortable with my guitar playing, but the Spirit has liberated me. This is like a firestorm of things for Larry to embarass himself.

We got towards the end of the set and had our rapid-fire prayer time, and the rabbi from the Messianic Jewish community here in town gave the last prayer. I don't know his name, and unfortunately, he left before I had a chance to talk to him, but he's an awesome man of God and that really comes through in his prayers. Today was no exception, and he took a room full of people who were already fired up for God and just lit a fuse among us. The worship team followed his lead, and Marvin led us through a simle G-C chord progression (although I was taking the liberty of playing Cadd9 because my hand hurt) whlie we sang this chorus:

When the enemy comes in like a flood
The Lord will raise up a standard

Everyone was clapping and stomping. So I'm confident in my guitar playing so far for the day, the Spirit has freed me, and now I'm all fired up for God. So I start absolutely hammering the strings on my guitar, bouncing back and forth in my chair, and actually singing at the top of my lungs along with the chorus (an amazing thing for me becuase I cannot play and sing at the same time usually). It was righteous - the room was just filled with the presence of God, I was worshipping the Lord, my family was there to share it with me, and I had more fun than I'd had in ages. That, my friends, is living.

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