It's Only You and Me Here Now

For a long time I have had this fear of singing out loud in church. There are a number of reasons for this being so, but the fact is that I have been afraid. Saturday night at the Open Mic night I sang with a musician friend of mine for a crowd of mutual friends and mild acquaintances. There was such a wonderful response to our performance that I felt a sort of freedom to sing today in church. Not to lead worship or anything, simply to worship God. So many lies always attack me when I try to sing in church that I usually just don't bother-- because it is a kind of warfare for me to sing. There's a lot of mental and physical components to worship that just kind of get rocked... so for the majority of my eight years of knowing Jesus I have kept quiet. Only recently have I somewhat come out of this shell I've been in. It felt good to be genuine and awkward before God in this way... to be passionate and uncomfortable and want to be quiet and inside myself but actively deciding not to, and to reveal my heart's cry instead. Because what kind of lover am I, to be afraid to sing in one place but never stop singing in another? If I can't hold my love in, then why should I try?

Ambitious souls, fruitful hands, all your creations are the new roots of old fruit.. the sewing of a past season. You are in the process of pursuit, of what it feels like to be held without letting go. There is no propaganda, no hidden agenda... the secret thats been shouted in heart throbs and soul pangs is LOVE. It's in the way you turn the pages of a novel you read, or the way you smile as you pass a stranger on the street. Its the way you sob in your sorrow, with the knowledge of comforts at the height of your pain. You cannot hide or be hidden, a fire like yours can only be controlled for so long. Its not merely words to be heard but its something to be felt, felt beyond feeling.... heard beyond hearing. You hear it in the quiet, you feel it in the vastness of empty rooms. It fills you up, body and soul... utterly consumed beyond all understanding.

I want so much to be filled by You. I want these gifts to glorify You. I want to throw out empty words, I want You. It's true, it's true. Even when my skin gets in the way, and proves to be a sort of cage, I cannot help but know what it is that every part of me is wanting, NEEDING so desperately. It's YOU. It's You, You, You. I don't want another dream unless it's from You. I want to talk to you day and night, sing to You, dance with You, stay at rest and if I must embarrass myself by my prison skin, let Your goodness give me the wings to be more of what You are. Not the otherworldly speech of a pretending people, but the raw genuine passion and peace of all that You are. If I must be crazy and ridiculous, don't let it be for the sake of show or in the name of striving, let it be because I have been with You and it's what You want from me... to be crazy with love, not to be a charismatic actor... because I know show and striving, now I want to know You.