Worship accomplishes something we cannot do for ourselves. 

And perhaps this is what our battles are more about than anything else.

Worship Over Worry...it's a phrase that has made its way into our daily lives as it's etched itself upon our hearts and even our walls. This woven beauty was delivered to our house last night as the kids at VBS strung this truth around nails telling us what we speak matters even in their young lives. Because honestly we can sometimes forget we're leaving trails of crumbs for those that come behind us.

I can't really put into words all this means to us. 

You see, sometimes something finds its way into your life and it's not until you recognize its worth that you’re fully able to see why it had to crash into your home in the first place. But sometimes, our life has to change for our heart to change.

Before Joe's cancer changed our schedules and how we were doing most everything, I thought we were handling life pretty well. Sure there were the daily stresses, as well as what comes with leading a church in the middle of the city. Our four sons are spread across four states and we lost my mom just four years ago and my Dad just one year ago. I just kept taking things as fast as they came knowing the pain would one day ease. We attended weekly worship services and Bible studies, we cultivated deep friendships, we were leading a church through the power of prayer, but somehow we were missing the deep need for God's presence in our lives. Although, we were placing ourselves in God's presence personally somehow we were missing that God wanted us to invite him into our presence. It wasn't until the cancer came that we were able to realize there's a letting go that happens in the act of worship. I'd struggled with worry for years. I wrestled with it, hid it, numbed it and even reasoned with it, but it wasn’t until our family chose to worship through all of this that things began to change in me. The great Dallas Willard says it perfectly...“If we don’t come apart for while, we will come apart after a while.”
You see sometimes God needs to pull us away from all that we are 'doing’, even ministry itself to do the important work within us. Although rest wouldn’t have ever been a word I thought I’d use to describe what we're living through, it's been finding its way into our lives lately.

Because rest truly isn't only confined to our physical bodies, it actually begins within our souls. It's when our minds and bodies find rest together that we are able to release all of our worries to God within worship that we truly understand that this is what he created worship for. 

Have you ever wondered why heaven is often depicted as a place of endless worship?
I've heard many people try to talk around this idea as if it would be endlessly boring, but what if our idea of worship is warped? What if we have never truly experienced worship like heaven is waiting to share with us? What if worship here and now is a gentle invitation to experience a sliver of heaven? What if worship is one of God's gift for our daily struggles? What if God's given us worship to refocus us from our world's suffering onto him? What if worship is God's ointment given to soothe our brokenness?

Friend, its hard to imagine that we are finding any semblance of rest these days in the middle of all of the chaos and pain, but God has been calming us with the gift of worship. He’s been lullabying us to sleep with it’s melodies and gently using it to fill us. 

Worship is giving us words to pray. It’s leading us to trust when we lack all of the answers. It’s teaching us to call upon all of heaven to fight on our behalf. It’s the answer for our anxiety.
It’s the hidden blessing we often miss when we're tangled up in what-ifs.

Friend, whether you're wandering through mountains or through the roughness of the valley's terrain know that although your heart's inclined to worry - God doesn’t want you to live this way. 
Worry tells us there's no way out and we're trapped inside of it, but this is not true! Because WITH God there's always a way out and a way through.

You see, it's in between two walls of swelling waves God's done his greatest work and he will do the same in our hard spaces too. In these beautiful spaces of worship our troubles lessen and the power of God increases.
Home in the presence of God is where we're planting our feet these days. Inside the longest days and the most beautiful miracles, and even in the deepest pain worship is our way through.  Come home with us friends.
Home to the heart of God.

Worshipping to One More Time by the Katinas these days.