God Doesn't Speak English, He Speaks Human.

I had a jam sesh on the guitar today with one of the Honduran seminary students named Ariel (guy, not girl). Hillsong has some awesome songs that I know in english that they sing in spanish too, one of them being "From the Inside Out" ("Desde Mi Interior" in spanish). Ariel and I started playing this song and it was so cool. We were playing the same chords, but he was singing the words in spanish and I was singing the words in english. This taught me an invaluable lesson. God doesn't give a hoot about the words we sing. Our words mean nothing to him. God even says in Isaiah 29:13, "they honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me." God only cares about what our hearts sing to him. He would rather me sing "blah blah blah" with my mouth and be singing "consume me from the inside out" with my heart than for me to sing the most grandiose phrases that my heart doesn't even believe. A guy was leading worship at a retreat I was at a few months ago and he stopped in the middle of the song and just told us, "Don't sing these words if you don't mean them. If you don't believe what you're singing, then don't sing. Just pray. Pray that God will make these words the cry out your heart." I challenge myself to think about that whenever I'm worshiping, and I challenge you to do the same. If you don't believe the words you're singing, then it brings no glory to God, so if that is where you are then don’t sing - just pray to God that he would change your heart.

“And the cry of my heart is to bring You praise
From the inside out, O my soul cries out”

Just thinking about those words…. A cry is something you can’t control. I don’t know of anytime when someone tried to cry (outside of trying to escape a speeding ticket). Crying is an outward manifestation of an emotional experience that occurred inside of you and was so strong that the response it evoked was uncontrollable. True worship starts from the heart, then pours out of your mouth. It’s not something you try to do – it’s something that, if you truly love God, you can’t not do.