An Exhortation to Worship

By Anne Marie Schlueter

To the heart that is ridden with the addiction to control. To the one who has been told that she has to work to put the pieces together, to be enough, and when she checks the twenty-seven-hundred things off of her to-do list, then there will be peace (maybe).

To the heart who still doesn’t understand and is standing with empty hands.

 To the one who doesn’t get the Father, who is uncomfortable with the idea of intimacy with a dad. To the heart that doesn’t get how love could be unfailing, could be faithful. To the one with messiness, who has dared to live, dared to be vulnerable. To the heart which is moving when she doesn’t understand. 

It’s time to worship.

It’s time to step away from your computer, put your phone on silent, open your hands, and step into the throne room. Run into the throne room. Because you need to know who you are and who your Father is.

Have you encountered Jesus today? Because He wants to encounter you.

 Have you been steadied today? Because He has steadiness for you.

 Have you experienced Love today? Because Love has abundant supply for you.

We shove ourselves through Lent, often with a desire to prove and the feeling of striving—to make this time worth it, to boost up our holiness performance.

 And right about now is the time that our commitments start to fall apart, because striving is never a good enough reason to give something up. Then, we beat ourselves up for not being enough, and begin to resent God, because of course, He’s probably disappointed in us to.

 But dear heart, He just has love for you today. Just simple, perfect, infinite love, that you don’t have to work for, you don’t have to strive for.

 He’s simply calling you to worship.

 Come to this place of abundance. Come to the well. He’s already there, He’s already waiting.

 So often, we’re afraid to dive into worship because there’s already so much pressure on us to do. We see worship as this thing that is going to take a lot of work, and so we avoid it. We have an aversion to even talking to Jesus, because it just sounds exhausting. And we have stuff to do.

 But worship isn’t doing, it’s being. It’s letting go of how we think things should be, how we think God should be, and how we think we should be, and letting Him just be Him. It’s not us pursuing an emotion, it’s about recentering.

It’s about letting God be God, and me be me. It’s stepping out of the pressure to do and falling into the reality to just be.

 Practically, this is silencing yourself, and realizing that He comes in close. You don’t have to be at a certain “level” for Him to show up—He’s already here. He’s already here, and it’s not about where you judge yourself to be on your holiness journey. 

 His love isn’t complicated. He comes in close and holds you. That’s it.

 Time spent receiving love is never wasted. 

 Sometimes, I just want to be the prostitute in Scripture that nobody expects anything from. I don’t have to be anything to anyone, and I don’t have to do. 

 But I can be powerful and healing and have responsibility and still come into worship, enter the throne room, and be allowed to be little and be simple. And just—be.

We look at prayer as this place where Jesus is going to tell us everything wrong with us, everything that we need to start doing, and take on more pressure. 

Here’s the point of worship: it’s our declaration that God is king. That He’s strong enough for us to fall on. Worship is the place that we come to know who is He, that we acknowledge His power. And in that space, there is reality. As our hearts become centered in this reality, addiction to control dies away, because His way is so much better. Anxiety and fear and depression all falls, because our God is bigger, and heaven invades earth when we open our hands and tell Him, “yes.”

We come to be reoriented, recentered, re-grounded in reality. You need it today, regardless of what you did or didn’t do yesterday. You need more of Him today. 

All of it is a response. It’s not about begging Him to invade our lives. It’s about giving Him permission to love us, because He doesn’t force. We don’t have to convince Him to give to us, we simply get to open our hands and receive in response to the infinite love that He’s pouring out.

Maybe these truths are new to you, maybe you’ve heard all of this a thousand times. Regardless, today, let yourself be steadied in a love that is in control of it all.

It doesn’t matter where you are. Where you’re heart is at, where there is victory, where there is struggle. Right now, He’s calling you to worship. Not to take from you, but because He longs to give to you.

Just receive.