My Heart Sings

There have been many random blog ideas which have come into my mind over the past week such as:

• what the franking machine sounds like when you bend down to pick up something off the floor and hear what it sounds like close to your ear
  
• how dangerous it is to drive so close to other cars when there is 5% visibility
  
• how frustrating my never-ending car kit tape is when it decides to change sides every 3 minutes

But none seemed like worth the bother to blog about until i thought about how much singing i've been doing lately, because the more i thought about it, the more the story unraveled and even had me in awe!

It started by me thinking about the singing practices that i've been going to once a week for a ladies dinner that's just been and gone, led by Naomi Hodges. Then it made me think, 'hehe, done with one lot of singing practice and now in with another lot!'.

I've now started doing singing practice with Aaron Hodges for a CD he's making (Aaron and Naomi are brother and sister!).

After that i started to think really hard about how much singing i seem to have done lately, over the last, say, 3 weeks. It's just come out of nowhere and i hardly even batted an eyelid!

Sure, i've been excited about how much i'm singing because i know that's where God can use me but i never stopped to think about how much i've been singing! I've also been doing random singing with the band at church but have noticed it's been every week for at least the last three!

I've had to question this in my Christian life because it was July last year when I knew God had given me this talent and that i wasn't using it. I knew that i'd pretty much shut him down up until that point because i didn't WANT to use it!

But the point of the story is that ever since i've said to God, 'take my voice and use it for your purposes', i've just seemed to hit a brick wall. I've talked to every person i know about joining bands at church things and have got the same response from all of them, 'oh that's fantastic, how exciting' but no follow-up on their enthusiasm.

There have been days where I've felt like God has been punishing me for misusing and being a bad steward of what he's given me in the past and on those days, i have felt abandoned and useless and yet i have still found Him worthy of being worshipped. Although i've felt like it, i know he'd never punish me for my sin and i know that he's worth praising despite the feeling of rejection and so even in my own doubt and emptiness, i knew he meant everything to me. For all that he's done for me, it makes me want to give him my everything and when i'm singing, whether it's in a band or not, i know that i'm using what he's given me and in those times, i feel like i can't contain how i feel for him. There are times when i just want to explode because of how overwhelming He is.

This may not be exciting for you but i feel like i'm not waiting for anything anymore! Because in the times when i've felt unheard and brushed off, God has given me strength to keep praising him and that's what i do. I don't need to wait for a band before i can sing to God, he's there 24/7 and it's something he's taught me in the HARD waiting period.

Lately i have had so many amazing opportunities to sing my praise to God with bands and with other people, which at the moment i am absolutely loving, can't get enough of it, but i know that at any time God could shut those doors he's thrown wide open to me. i also know that praising God is something we should do all the time and that even when those doors close, God doesn't close up shop and leave town, he asks us to get even more passionate and intimate with him. He's still the same awesome God that gave his son's life to redeem us!

i know that God is faithful because i've seen him do an amazing thing in my life over the past year.

Tabitha prayed on sunday night that i would clearly see the roadmap God has for me and while it's something i will still continue to learn, since coming into an intimate relationship with him in Jan 2004, i can see the person he's shaping me to be, i can see his timing of revealing himself to me - it's not much, it's fragment by fragment, but i can see it and every time i notice it, i fall more in love with him than i thought i could!

When i think about the time of events over the last year, it sort of all makes sense. I was karaoking long before july last year and yet never knew it might've been something God was using to teach me about being in His presence and about singing for his glory. There was a time when i thought i'd be better off singing in a pub than singing at church!

Then he taught me about becoming free in worship at Grace Tabernacle - something i'm not good at but still developing, still learning. That was July. Then in the months after that, people confirming stuff that i'd been praying about.

And now, after 6 months of feeling empty and abandoned, God is lavishing himself upon me, opening doors left right and center, giving me opportunities to express publicly my adoration of him and to see the difference being that unlike before, i never want to stop. Once i am deeply immersed into praising him with my voice, i'm always wanting more. More of an infilling of the Holy Spirit. God puts people in my way to encourage me, he uses people as his ears who hear me. Even when i was far away from God and i didn't want to sing, he put one person inparcticular, Aaron Hodges in my path and i constantly rejected his encouragement time after time after time and believe me, he was persistant, to the point where i wanted to dropkick his head! hahaha.....if only i'd have listened to him.

Over the last month or so, God has used people like Naomi, Erin, Joel who have encouraged me in the area where i know God wants to use me and i thank them for being open to God perhaps without even knowing it! These people encouraged me when i thought no-one could understand what i was experiencing.

Everytime someone asks me to sing, i get butterflies because it's not something i take lightly or for granted anymore, i know how privileged i am to express my love for God through singing, how honoured i am to come before God and sing for him - gives me goosebumps but there's nowhere i'd rather be than in his courts giving him praise for who he is and what he's done for me, nowhere!

Tink xoxo