During high school, my friends and I always attended youth group on Friday nights. It was pretty typical: the evening comprised of playing different games and eating food. After the games were done, we would be ushered in to a room whereby we would sing songs and then listen to a short talk given by the youth leader.
I knew what to do in these moments. At 15, I had become an expert at tuning out religious or spiritual talk. Not only did my family attend church twice every Sunday, we also went to one midweek service in addition to another church club within the week. I was a well-seasoned Christian, or at least I thought I was.
But on this particular Friday evening, something happened that I will never forget. I was in the chapel listening to people singing songs, but it all felt so different. I looked across the room and saw people singing as if they really meant it. People weren’t only singing about God, they were singing to Him. They looked and acted as if God were really in the room.
It was the first time, at least to my remembrance, that I felt that same reality. The only way I can describe this moment is to tell you that God was in the room.
But I didn’t sing. I saw the words on the screen. And I looked at the person leading the songs, but at first I stubbornly did not even open my mouth. But the fact is, I really wanted to. All my life, my soul longed to sing out to God. It is hard to explain this tension, but let me put it like this. My soul longed to sing out a song to God, to His greatness, but I felt that up to that point, if I were to sing I would simply be singing for the sake of being in church. I had never felt the “Godness” of God.
It was in this moment that I first sensed the greatness of God all around me. So I gave in and started singing.
And what pleasure I felt. I didn’t fully comprehend this God to whom I was singing, and I still don’t, but deep down, I knew God was real. Worship, in this case, came before I placed my utter dependence in God.
As I tried to make sense of what I experienced that evening, I came across the writings of the late Abraham Heschel. He writes: “The secret to spiritual living is the power to praise. Praise is the harvest of love. Praise precedes faith. First we sing, then we believe. The fundamental issue is not faith but sensitivity and praise, being ready for faith.”
My heart’s expression of worship at the Friday night youth event served as a means to knowing and understanding God more. As Heschel says, trust in God was obtained by first acknowledging and responding to the reality of God.
It has been said there is only one gospel, but there are many ways to that gospel. In my case, on one particular evening while I was midway through high school, I attended a church youth event not looking for God. And I was confronted with His presence.
It was then that I encountered God for the first time. I was, as Heschel writes, “overtaken with awe of God” and in singing out, even raising my hands to God, I experienced a rich pleasure that I had never tasted before; pleasure because my voice and hands were finally able to express what my soul had so longed for.
Flickr photo (cc) by D G Butcher
