Last night I had a very interesting time whilst at church. On Sunday nights Bethel has two different services, one at the main campus that has the usual schedule, worship and sermon with ministry time after, and another at what is called the "Twin View Campus" that is essentially 3 hours of music and dancing in worship of God. I was at the Twin View service. The music was great and everyone was really engaged, but I had a really hard time of it for most of the night. The reason for this requires some explaining. Recently I have been struggling through the idea that God does not actually require my worship, He is quite pleased to have me in my entirety and I do not have to a single thing on top of that to please Him. This is a very different paradigm than the one I had before where I felt like I had to fulfill my quota of singing/dancing before I would even be able to feel His pleasure. This has been a yearlong journey, but I am still working through it. Anyway, because of these conflicting ideas of fulfilling my responsibility and not having a responsibility to fulfill, last night became a bit of a roller-coaster of emotion. At no matter what I was doing I was questioning whether I was doing the right thing, if I was sitting in my chair peacefully praying (or almost falling asleep) I would wonder if God was wanting me to be up and dancing, or if I was up and dancing I would wonder if I was dancing because that was my chosen form of worship or if I was just doing it because that was what was expected of me. In hindsight I suppose I was over-thinking the whole thing a little to much, but it is hard not too because I am trying to figure out my standpoint on the whole issue.
By the way, while I was at Twin View God showed up at Bethel in what's called a 'glory cloud.' There was a physical cloud of smoke, feathers, and flakes of different coloured 'gold dust.' It was all pretty intense from what I heard, I have not seen it myself yet but I will certainly give my own account of it when I do, I may even capture it on camera. God is just crazy.
P.S. The next day my friend prophecied (Asked God for a message to tell me)over me and he saw a picture (in his imagination) of me curled up in a ball worshiping God and being completely satisfied curled up in a ball. That answers my question of whether it is okay to worship God that way. Thanks Jesus for telling me what's up.
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