Behind the ministry of the song - preparation of the heart - Printable Version

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Behind the ministry of the song - preparation of the heart - HelenaZF - 03-26-2017

I had an opportunity to dance at church today to Loren Daigles' "Once and For All". As I listened through the song list for this Sunday, that song spoke out to me as a message that could be enhanced by interpretive movement, so I went through it a few times to set the blocking and a few moves, but mainly it would be an "in the moment" choreography depending on how the music team interpreted it that day.



If you are not familiar with the song, you can hear it on youtube here:





I know that the Lord will give me choreography for a song if I can sense "life" in it when I'm listening to it. And this song had that. I have come to trust that God will do whatever he wants with the songs he has highlighted for me, so I don't generally try to analyze what is going on from that point. I just trust God and dance.



Little did I know that God had some personal business to do with me before I could offer this particular dance.



As I was experiencing the first part of the service and the praise time, the Lord began to bring back to me all kinds of shameful things I had done all throughout my life. Things I had not thought about in years, and I began repenting as each one surfaced. The sheer number of them shocked me, shamed me, and effectively dealt a death blow to any satisfaction I might be taking in leading a "mostly righteous" life. I know, that even sounds prideful in itself. Well, I repented of that sin too, along with all the other promptings. I should have known I would be called to account because of the starting lyrics of the song:



God I give You all I can today

These scattered ashes that I hid away

I lay them all at Your feet.

From the corners of my deepest shame,

The empty places where I've worn your Name.



Yikes. How could I have danced that without taking care of some accounting business with God beforehand? I couldn't have. At least, not honestly. So since I wasn't conscious enough to initiate the process, the Lord was faithful to do it for me. By the time I presented the dance, I had been fully crushed, leveled and undone by the ugliness of my sins. The dance offering came from a broken vessel, but a redeemed one. I believe that intense cleansing released the anointing to freely flow to God's people through the ministry of the dance.



I'm sharing this to say that as we move along in our ministry, even when we try to be always sensitive to the Spirits leading, we can become complacent, even dull, and fail to adequately prepare our hearts. This was a power reminder to me that I can't just blithely present something that asks others to lay themselves bare without being willing to do it myself first.



Today I also received two separate invitations to offer my ministry, after a long period of none. I very much doubt that is coincidence.


<SPOILER spoiler="Once and For All - Lyrics"></SPOILER>

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