The Loop

There is a thin place that I have found that I can come back to wherever I want.

A “thin place” is an instance where there seems to be no distance between Heaven and Earth. A lot of people describe a thin place as when they held their baby for the first time, or when they eat a certain food that reminds them of a passed loved one. A thin place is not something that happens only once, and you may not know it is a thin place until after you look back at that moment later on. But once you realize that you can feel Jesus’s presence in these moments, you know a thin place when you’re in it.

Worship is a thin place for me. When I close my eyes and focus solely on God’s words in those moments, I know He is happy that I am using the talents I have been blessed with to please Him. Everything else falls away, and it really is an incredible feeling to feel like I’m so close to Heaven.

I have been leading worship for about 18 years now, and the more I serve, the more I feel God’s presence in my life. I did not notice this as a 14-year-old, as I was much more interested in just playing guitar than really honing in on why I was playing these songs. But over time, I have started to put these pieces together to form the bigger picture…still an incomplete picture, but one that I can definitely see more clearly now.

Recently, I found a new reason behind the “why” of worship. I began to really think about the tools I use for worship, and how it’s linked to my thin place. As a guitar player, my instrument consists of quite a few parts, but the two biggest parts that are the same among all guitars (and honestly most stringed instruments) are steel strings and a wood base. Somehow, I had never really thought of that before…to me, it’s the same guitar I’ve been playing for over a decade.

Then it occurred to me…the tools I am using to praise God are the tools that were used to sacrifice His son for me. I didn’t know it before, but now I realize that God has reclaimed those tools and put them in my hands to help lead others in worship! How cool is that? “You take what the enemy meant for evil, and You turn it for good,” wrote Chris Brown in the song See A Victory. Having this new context for my own instrument really puts those words into a new perspective; one I wasn’t looking for, but one that I didn’t know I needed.

No matter how I’m feeling that particular day, or whatever drama I have in my life, or how tired or hungry or sick I am, I know that when I have a guitar and am leading others in worship, God is being praised. We are called to come before his presence with singing, and that may not always be an easy task, but that does not mean we should stop worshiping Him! So yeah, some days I wake up and am not feeling it (I call those Double Caffeine Sundays!). But once I get in the moment, and find the spot between the sound of my guitar and God’s voice, I can hear that He’s pleased that I am using my gifts to lift up His name.

So whether you worship in your car, at your office, at home, or in church, my prayer for you is that you can feel God smile upon you as you pour out your love for him by worshiping. Pastor Gregg Parris once mentioned what he called jailbird singers: “because you’re always behind bars and looking for a key!” God doesn’t care about your musical abilities…He cares about your heart. Worship is a way to reveal your heart to God, and to be reminded that He loves you and has great things for you! And in the event you’re having your own Double Caffeine Sunday, remember that you are in my thin place with me.

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