Bring your need to the music.

I grew up in church.  Played the piano for church from sixth grade until I was in my late 30s.  So I’ve done a lot of singing about God.

Several years ago, God put it on my heart to go on a two-week trip to teach the Bible in Africa, which scared the snot out of me (yes –the snot right out of me.)  I said, Okay, I’ll go.  But I don’t want to, and the whole idea makes me want to throw up. 

After the decision to go to Africa was made firm, I started what I call THE YEAR OF FEAR.  Every night I cried before I went to bed and told my husband, I can’t do this, and he patiently, every night for a year, listened to me list off everything about the trip that was scary.  On the top of the list was being hot.  (Uganda is on the equator.)  I don’t do heat very well.  Next on the list were insignificant things, like civil unrest, diseases of a third world country, and dying in a plane crash over the ocean. 

I started walking in to church every week as a desperate woman.  I had never walked into church desperate before. 

We started singing the same songs as always, but they were all new to me.  Because now I needed them.  I would sing a verse about who God is, and I would look God straight in the eye and say, with steel in my voice, You had better mean this.  I’m going to Africa, and you had better be what I’m singing about right now, or I’m going to die. 

On this side of Africa (let me point out that I did not die), I now know that desperation is good.  It makes me needy.  And when I am needy I find God IS what I sing about. 

If you’re afraid, anxious, desperate, I say GREAT!  You’re in the perfect position to look God in the eye as you sing and say, You had better be who you say you are. 

And find out He is.