What's in a name?

While I was at sonshine the three fold signicance of my names struck me and yeah these are the last details that I will be sharing concerning the festival.

Ministry, Music and Me

It's crazy to think that it's been 8 years since I first stepped foot on the Willmar HS campus for Sonshine but man it's been a good ride. A lot of fun memories over all those mid-July weeks but this one may just be the best so far.

Check that temp

An accurate thermostat

I like to worship. Partly because I know how worthy God is of it and partly because I enjoy it. I grew up in a church where there was and is one unwritten/unspoken rule during the service. Don’t have fun. We talk about orderly worship, about not making people feel uncomfortable, that it isn’t how people express themselves but aren’t those all excuses to cover up the fact that they fear the inevitable emotions that come with freedom in praise? Maybe that’s too much of a generalization, but I would say that it is also very accurate.

For my part, I remember always loving to go to bible camp because I could express my praise to God how ever I saw fit. In my younger days one short week out of the summer with a few other random weekends through out the year was good enough but as my passion for God has grown so has my love for worship, which brings me to the real reason I am posting right now.

A few years ago, at the Chi Alpha fall retreat was the first time I full abandoned my ideas about praise. I was dancing and just celebrating Him. I later got questioned about it but never really responded, didn’t know what to say at the time and because of my school setting the dryness began to dry me up. Well as with many other things God was really shaking the rust off this year at school. I was letting Him operate in increased fullness as the year progressed but my praise never really got back to that place of full abandonment.

Last night things changed.

The internet had been offline at BCOM for about 24 hours but right around 3:30 it finally came back. I checked my facebook page and the first hit in my newsfeed was from a band named Desperation band. I usually only read a couple items in my feed, but this one stuck out to me. It said that “.” I didn’t have any plans for that evening so that became the event of the day. I found out it was only $5 so yeah I was locked in. I had the feeling like this was a divine appointment just because of the circumstances.

I got to North Central University at about 6:40, the auditorium that the show was being held in had a stated seating of 1000 so I expected it to be packed out. It got to about 7:05 and there was at most 400 people in the auditorium, which made it feel more like a local band then one of the nations leading praise teams but I was fine with it. After a few announcements the band started up.

It turned out to be one of the most enjoyable nights of the year so far. I didn’t care about the opinions of the people around me, how looked or anything, I was just letting it all happen and it was fun and good and pleasing to God, He told me so, ha. I danced, wept, raised my hands, sat in awe, basically everything that good worship entails. It takes a special type of conditioning to what I did and I really don’t know how I managed it, I’ll call it God’s help again. I was still freaking tired afterward but when I got back a few of the guys that I live with said that I had a glow and while I’ve been told that before, it’s been a while and was really refreshing to hear again.

I broke free and was unabandoned, that’s the point. It was just a few months shy of three years since the last time, but it was worth the wait and will happen again much sooner next time. What I thought was going to be a fun time where I knew God was going to do something turned out to be the best thermometer of where I am at now that I have experienced so far.