Go...
In theory, I know that worship is lifelong and an all-day-every-day kind of thing. My posture should be set daily in such a way that I'm glorifying God with everything I do. But in reality, that theory hasn't completely settled in my heart. Because truth be told, day in and day out, I measure my worship by how together and whole I feel. And when I'm at church on Sunday morning and my children are safely settled in the nursery and my husband is beside me and I've had time to pick out a matching, I can't help but raise my hands in worship and praise for that time. It's a neat and tidy moment when I can clearly feel God pounding on my heart and filling the space around me.
But in reality, in my day to day, I rarely have these moment of togetherness. In fact, I just feel messy most of the time.
Sure, I post pictures of how sweet and cute out daughters are in their matching outfits, but little do you know, the youngest is very well wearing a target bag as a diaper under that precious dress because I (once again) forgot the extra diapers.
You may be impressed by the weekly menu plan and shopping list you see posted on my fridge, but you should also know that the same sheet of paper has been up there for a few months. And though I long for an organized, one-time shopping trip, in actuality, I've been to 4 different grocery stores this week, one of which I drove off from without even putting my paid for groceries in the car.
Or maybe you saw me the other day before a job interview, seemingly peaceful and collected, when truthfully, I had just covered my hands in a mud mask that I thought was lotion and had to wipe off the earthy gray goop with my own spit.
But you know what? God loves our messes. He allows our messes. They remind us of how messy and disorderly and chaotic Christ's death on the cross was. There was no togetherness there. No calm, peaceful, neatly-tied-up-with-a-monogrammed-bow moment there. It was yucky. Disgusting. Shameful. And yet, it was the most perfectly beautiful display of love that has ever and will ever occur.
So in the chaos of screaming children and screaming fears in our mind and screaming comparisons to other people's seemingly unmessy worlds, let's choose to press in and listen to God calling. Let's not pressure ourselves to make our worship look or seem a certain way, let's simply offer it. Because when we see mess, He sees masterpiece. When we see chaos, He see growth. When we see failure, he sees endurance. Only His love for us is perfect, so we can offer our "as-is" hearts to Him and know that our praise makes Him smile very time.
Stop.
