God loves to move in the unglamorous, stripped down, and few; He uses us in our emptiness

HUNGER

Last weekend Sonrise Church hosted my EP release party and they invited the band and I to come and lead worship for all of their corporate services as well. It was an awesome weekend. We did a total of six services starting the weekend on Saturday night.

If you can imagine the band and I were  beat. We had one more service to do at 4pm and I pretty much had no voice left after singing all weekend and was struggling even to talk. I could tell the band was struggling a little too and I knew we needed to push ourselves and we needed Jesus.

God will always call us to push beyond how we feel to accomplish His plan and the beauty is, He will always give us the strength to endure and complete that which He has called us to.

I grabbed my bible looking to find strength. The Lord lead me to a scripture and I cannot remember now where it was but it said something to the effect of “God calls us to be ministers in times that are favorable and times that are not”. I realized that in my weakness I had lost sight of the fact that we are all ministers and that God calls us to push beyond how we feel and rely on His spirit. “Though my heart grows weary Jesus remains the strength of my life”. I shared that scripture with the band and encouraged them in this truth and though physically we all still felt exhausted I believe His spirit fell on us as we headed into the service.

The service that was happening that night was called “Light My Way”. It’s a service for those struggling with addiction and ex cons that are assimilating back into society. We had an awesome time with God in all the services and it was great to experience Him in this intimate group too.  As we began to worship, the presence of God fell in that room. I had no voice and yet through the power of God I was able to sing, the band was beat down but through His presence they played with conviction and without missing a note. I felt Him close with just a few of us. I opened my eyes during the worship time and saw 25 people with hands stretched as high as they could reach, I heard voices singing as loud as possible, and I saw tears of healing streaming down the cheeks of men and women.

I think there were a couple things at play here.

The first thing is that as I had explained, we had nothing left to give in and of ourselves. We were useless in our flesh and so we needed Jesus to move. I hate that we have to get to that place sometimes before we let Jesus do His thing. He is just waiting around for us to get out of the way so He can really work.  Enough said here.

The second thing was hunger. A pure hunger for Jesus.  This was really the stripped down and unglamorous service. No hype or special effects just people desperate for Jesus. Jesus said, “come as you are” and they did. Broken, weary, hopeless and in need of a savior, burning with a hunger so consuming they couldn’t help but worship without reserve and He came and met us where we were.

Jesus loves to move for all people, it just takes is a little bit of hunger.

Sonrise church is an amazing church from their regular corporate gatherings to their special focus“Light My Way Service”.