Something big happened today.  I would be honored if you allow me to tell you the story, but first a little historical perspective.

For a long time now I have been having relational trouble with God.  Basically since I was 16 and I started to look at girls and be attracted to them there have been problems between us.  Don’t get me wrong, we hadn’t stopped talking or being friends, but I had definitely not been holding up my end of the bargain relationally.  Our relationship has at times survived solely on his willingness to extend grace and forgiveness repeatedly.

I’ve been in this relationship with God since I was 4 or 5 years old.  So it may come as a bit of shock that during all of that time I have never once raised my hands in worship.  I’ve sang, I’ve danced, I’ve swayed, I’ve felt the “quiver in my liver” as Pastor Bill would say, but never once have I raised my hands.  It felt stupid, like I would be trying to get attention.  I used to think that raising your hands was a method to show off how spiritual you are, and I wasn’t going to have any of that.  I knew enough to know that you weren’t supposed to brag or hold yourself higher than others…so I always questioned the authenticity of those who worshiped in that way.

Then I was in a worship service at the youth center I now work at and felt God asking me to get down on my knees and worship him.  It wasn’t an audible voice, but I knew exactly what God was asking for.

I didn’t do it.

The young man standing right in front of me did.

He got down on his knees in front of all of his peers and friends, and he worshiped God wholeheartedly.  He responded to what Christ asked of him, and I didn’t.  Even after the other students example, I held stubbornly to my pride and refused to get down on my knees.

That was the opening battle in a very long war.   I now knew that some of those people raising their hands in worship (or down on their knees) had been prompted by God to do so.  I also knew that God wanted that from me.  I stopped looking down on people who did this (unless it was clear they wanted the spotlight) and started silently hating the fact that I wasn’t one of them.

The battles have continued over the next 10+ years.  A few notable ones include the hour in a Haitian church service where God asked me repeatedly to raise my hands, and I kept saying “no, or I’ll raise my hands in the next song God, I promise”.  There have been more battles than I care to remember, and it was starting to seem like I couldn’t be defeated.  Even after I started playing consistently on the worship team, I still stubbornly refused to raise my hands.  I would dance around, I would be passionate, I would give it almost everything I had to give, but the lines were drawn and my hands were staying down.

I just didn’t understand why this was so important to God.  Shouldn’t I worship God in the way that I am most comfortable worshiping him?  It’s just raising my hands…it stupid and pointless!  What does it even mean God…that “I’m overwhelmed by you” or something ridiculous like that?

This weekend, I knew a battle was coming.  I saw it coming on Wednesday during practice.  I knew when I walked into church this weekend that God wanted me to raise my hands, and I knew that I didn’t want to.

I had made it through Saturday night and 1st service on Sunday without even feeling prompted to raise my hands, and had let my guard down for 2nd service thinking that I was “in the clear”.  I even made it through the main set of 3 songs at the beginning of 2nd service with no trouble.

Today (Sunday) the bits of the sermon that I caught were about surrender.  As I sat in the stairway waiting to play our final song for the weekend, the word “surrender” quickly infiltrated my thought processes and demanded that I pay attention to it.  In one of those sort of instantaneous connections the human brain sometimes makes, my mind flashed back to an old war movie I had seen, where the hero captured a large amount of the enemy soldiers.  My mind asked itself in a split second how the hero had known that the enemy was actually surrendering.  The answer came back just as quickly that the other soldiers had raised their hands.

Raising their hands was an indication of surrender.

I’ve promised to surrender to God before.  Hundreds of times probably.  How will he know that I really mean it?

I knew what I had to do.

I didn’t want to.

God moved one of the congregation to kneel in the aisle.

My mind flew back again to the time I had said no to God as a student.

The last chorus of the song was playing…I wasn’t supposed to play in that section and had run out of excuses.

I’m happy to say that I’ve finally lost the battle.

Today I raised my hand in surrender for the first time.

Note:  Comments have to be approved before you will see them show up.  You wouldn’t believe the amount of spam directed at blogging sites.  Thank you for your patience!  ~josh