I can't keep it all in

I've been leading worship for about 8 months now.  The story of how that came to be is pretty amazing and unlikely, but it's for another day.

The first thing I had to do when I began leading worship was to submit.  The act of leading worship became an exercise in continual submission.  I am not a gifted musician.  I don't have a great voice.  The only way God can be glorified by my strumming and singing is if He is doing it through me.  And He does.  When I let Him.

Recently a song found me that was new to us.  We've been working on it a few weeks and the song has taught me new facets of worshiping God that I didn't know were there previously.  As a result, this song energizes me.  Because the act of singing it and playing it tunes my heart to God's pitch, I feel like I have an open conduit for the Holy Spirit to rain down into me.  I don't want to stop, I want to get my fill and let it overflow.  We have a count-down timer before we start the worship set and I could hardly contain myself watching it tick down.  It was in slow motion.  I needed to praise my King!  It's time for worship!  Even though "that song" wouldn't be played for another 45 minutes, I needed to shout and sing and glorify the Lord.  I almost felt like there was a crackling energy emanating sparking between me and the guitar and on up to heaven.

I used to have brief moments like this.  Not so deep or profound, but a taste of what being touched by the Holy Spirit was like.  It used to leave me drained.  We called it the Holy Hangover.  An encounter with God was always followed by an emotional valley.  It seemed inevitable.  Now I don't think that's the case.  When we allow Jesus to make our hearts new again, they are like a new wineskin.  They can hold more than before, they can hold a different type of liquid than before.  I feel like He's made my heart new again.  It's not broken like it was before.  When it's filled, it doesn't all spill out immediately, leaving an empty void.  Or maybe it is broken, but instead of brief moments of refilling my heart has learned how to constantly seek Him out, to constantly replenish from the source itself.  Where I previously thought that humans need a recovery period from our spiritual encounters, maybe the opposite is actually true.  Maybe it's that we're more whole when we strive to never cease these encounters.

Our God is Healer, awesome in power...