In Psalm 33:9 it states “For when He spoke, the world began! It appeared at His command.” The past couple of weeks, this is what the Lord has been walking me through – that everything that He has created was created simply at His command, by His Word. The gospel of John starts out “In the beginning, the word already existed. The word was with God, and the word was God… the Word gave life to everything that was created, and His life brought light to everyone.” Before the world was God and His Word. By simply speaking, He ushered in an entire universe into existence. As Jesus came down, died, and resurrected, He gave us the gift of the Holy Spirit, now, that same Word that brought into existence all that we see dwells inside of us. When we pray, we can pray with boldness knowing that the One who created all things has given us His authority through His Holy Spirit. When we sing songs of praise, we can sing them with boldness knowing that our words do not fall on deaf ears. When we pray or sing of redemption, we can approach the throne with confidence knowing that the same God who dwells inside of us is also the same God whose words are healing, power, and victory.
In this final month, my team (Wedding Planners) will continue to work with our ministry called Beats and Books (@beatsandbooksint on Instagram). This ministry has been so sweet to work with over these last few weeks. We have been able to help them excel academically, musically, and spiritually as well as form relationships. This past week was their last week of ministry before their Easter break, which means that we were blessed with the opportunity over the week to tell them the story of Jesus from birth to resurrection. The story of the Word coming down into flesh and living a life none of us could live, dying a death that we all deserved, and resurrecting to secure our eternity in Him. It has been such an honor to share the gospel with these teens and be able to talk to them in small groups about what the Good News means for them today. During my small group, we urged them towards questions like “if Jesus was the Son of God, why didn’t He stop the crucifixion from happening?” and “During the sermon on the mount, Jesus states ‘therefore you must be perfect like your Father in heaven is perfect.’ What does this mean?” We were able to dive deep into answering these questions with some teens who knew this story and others who did not have any understanding of the gospel message.
With this ministry, it has also been amazing to see how the Lord has used the unique ways He has wired my teammates and I throughout our time at this ministry in order to minister to these kids as He desires. Our team has those who excel in helping tutor math and English, those who are great at connecting personally with the students, those who are able to help with the behind the scenes on social media, creating curriculum, and helping teach the kids how to play music and enter into a moment of worship.
Personally, through this ministry, I have been able to fall into a posture of daily worship. Every day, we begin with prayer and a couple of worship songs played acoustically. This has allowed me to really dig deeper into the weight of worship, ultimately helping me to further understand the power and authority of the words we speak with the Spirit that dwells inside of us. When we begin to sing lyrics such as “I’m no longer a slave to fear, I am a child of God.” This is a declaration of the truth of a salvation. We no longer identify with fear because of Jesus. So now, the same word that defeated fear, is the same word we are given to make these declarations. These songs are so much deeper than just beautiful words and melodies, they are songs that sing of victory and give life to captives. It has become so abundantly clear over these past few months how desperately important falling into constant worship is to a believer. Worship is where breakthrough happens, worship is where we ascribe worth to the Father, worship is where we are able to use the giftings the Father has given us to then in turn use them for Him, for His kingdom, and for the things of His kingdom. Worship is the place we surrender who we are and say “not my will but yours be done”
As humans, we can choose to use our words to speak life or to speak death, to praise or to curse, to encourage or to discourage, to be humble or to be proud, to love or to be envious. Through Christ, we have the choice of the words in which we speak and if there’s one thing that my life is a testament to, it is that when choosing the words of life, life is what I receive, when choosing words that lead to death – depression, anxiety, etc. are what follows. The words that give life are found in Christ alone, the giver and creator of life. Apart from the one who creates life, we can only experience death. My prayer for believers everywhere is that we may begin to focus on speaking words that bring life to those around us, that we begin to recognize the weight of our words, that we will become slow to speak and by living at a place of constant prayer and worship we will begin to seek Christ in every interaction, whether with a fellow believer or with an unbeliever.
