Not too long ago, I spent the night in the emergency room with my mama. At 69 years old, when sharp pains in your chest radiate up into your jaw, you go to the ER. The family and I were about an hour and a half away at a conference when I got the call. I was too far away to be helpful, too far away to do anything really. So, as I was driving to the hospital, I prayed. My wife Teri, who can often be counted on to do the exact right thing at exactly the right moment, turned on the radio to our favorite Christian station. We sang, worshipped together as a family, and then… I prayed some more. At some point during the drive, I found peace, that kind of peace that makes no sense at all. Worry, fear, and anxiety simply left. In my heart, I knew everything was going to be alright. So what did I do then? I prayed some more.
This IS my mama we’re talking about.
I made it to the ER in relatively short order and well before the doctors had done anything significant. I went from praying and driving to praying and waiting. During that “hurry up and wait” of any good ER, I decided to get ahead on my Bible reading; I re-read the last chapter of Job and dove into the first eight Psalms. We tend to view these next 150 chapters as simple poetry, music, praises to an Almighty God. We are not wrong. Some of the most beautiful poetry ever written was done so by the hand of a psalmist, but as I sat in the hospital, in the craziness of a busy ER, I realized something. Many of these guys didn’t sit down to write JUST to praise God. They wrote, they sang, they composed because they were fighting a battle. We see the authors write with enemies surrounding them. They write while their good names are being destroyed. They write in despair but with full assurance of who God is. They. Were. Fighting. A. Battle. And they knew how to fight it: with worship, with prayer and patience, and with proper position.
When we give God His proper place in our lives, and then worship Him with our lives as God Almighty, we begin to access an arsenal that cannot be beaten. This is how we step into the presence of God and find ourselves placed securely in the cleft of the rock. Then, and only then, do we stand in the place where “no weapon formed against us shall prosper.” We must come to the realization that worship – true, authentic, heartfelt worship – moves the heart of God. It brings Heaven to earth and makes the miraculous happen. It allows us to say, with certainty, “The Lord watches over the way of the righteous… (Psa 1:6)” It allows us to stand confident in the knowledge that YHWH is “a shield around me, my glory, and the One who lifts up my head” (Psa 3:3). It allows us to be completely and totally honest with God, declaring every weakness, every doubt, every concern with abandon, and then it allows us to trust Him to BE God in our lives.
We must come to the realization that worship – true, authentic, heartfelt worship – moves the heart of God. It brings Heaven to earth and makes the miraculous happen.
When the results came in, my mama was fine; there was no sign of a cardiac event. She came home the next day tired of doctors and ready to be back at work, but the miracle of the day was not lost on her or on me. So now my prayer for us, for all of us, for anyone who has taken the time to read this article, is that we remember – in every verse, in every song, in every moment of prayer – THIS is how we fight our battles.
“For though we live in the body, we do not wage war in an unspiritual way, since the weapons of our warfare are not worldly, but are powerful through God for the demolition of strongholds. We demolish arguments and every high-minded thing that is raised up against the knowledge of God, taking every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:3-5).
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