I Be Back

Sorry to leave the dance series hanging! I will finish the story but for the next week I am at staff training for camp.

Thank you for praying. :)

A Story of Dance (part II)

Back to the Sunday morning church service. . .

    I knew God was calling me to dance with Him but I rebelled. "God, what if I am a distraction to the church? What if I draw their eyes away from you? You are a God of order, right? How can dance here be right? WHY am I so confused about this?!" As I knelt there sobbing I realized that I believed a terrible lie, somehow over the course of time I had let the enemy deceive me into believing that dance had no place in the church, in corporate worship.

If you had asked me about this before that morning, I would have denied it, "Of course dance does! I have lived it!". But the lie had gone far deeper than I knew. And even recognizing it as a lie, I struggled to let it go.

 

    The music came to a close and the pastor read from a passage from on the New Testament letters, stopping to repeat one phrase in particular. I don't remember what the passage was or even the phrase but God spoke to me through it of His promise to me, of the great things He would bring forth. And I cried even harder that He would speak so to me when I was fighting against Him. Again, He asked me to dance when they did music with the offering. Again, I said no.

 

-Interlude-

    At this point, I was a terrible mess of tears and snot, not to mention emotional turmoil: "Abba, I am such a mess!" But, in tender love, God gave me the impression that if He were to be standing there in flesh in front of me, I could wipe the snot off on Him. Gross, maybe, but again I was overwhelmed but how much and how steadfastly He loved me.

-end Interlude-

 

    I stopped bawling long enough to listen to the pastor's message. She spoke about the firstfruits sacrifice and celebration in the Old Testament. In particular, she emphasized God's call for us to thank Him and rejoice before we have seen a full harvest, to praise Him while the seed is still in the ground and anything might happen to it. I listened and was reminded that I am to rejoice and thank God for the ministry of dance even though I can't see it. The harvest is His.

    The morning service ended and I had an eagerly attentive audience in my friend's family who wanted to know what I had thought of the service (her dad pretty much interrogated me, lol). I summarized what I had happened and they encouraged me that I could most definitely dance in their services, that normally there were people dancing. I received their words with mixed feelings: joy, relief, guilt, hope.

 

    That evening, most of my friend's family tromped back into the van to go to the evening church service. Honestly, I did not want to go. I hadn't slept enough in the last few days, I was spiritually/emotionally drained, I was grouchy. But I went and walking through the front doors, I told God that He would have all of me. I was here to worship Him.

(..more coming…)

A Story of Dance (part I)

This is a story, a testimony, a revelation of dance but it is also a beautiful demonstration of God's mercy and grace. On June 1^st, during a Sunday morning church service, He asked me to dance with Him. I buried my face in my hands and I cried because I wouldn't.

 

To give you a better understanding of what happened, I will give you some background. God has given me dance as a gift. I first began to grow in this gift through the Jesus Dance School and a dance ministry during my teen years. I discovered how dance could be a form of intercession but my deepest passion at the time was worship dancing with the church. My experiences over the short life of the dance ministry have impacted me greatly. In time, the ministry died. It happened slowly as members in the church (I never knew who) prompted the dancing to move away from the front to the sides, then to the back.

It was never said directly to me but I was left with the strong impression that dancing was a distraction during worship, that this gift was negatively impacting people and drawing them away from God rather than to Him.

I remember very well the last worship dance practice. I felt that strange peace that surpasses all understanding when the dance leader told us that it was ending. I knelt before God during the dancing and told Him that the gift was His. If I ever danced again, it was to be His choice.

 

That summer, I went with a dance/drama team to perform on the streets during the Olympics in Athens, Greece (which is another strange and beautiful story). God opening up this opportunity for me to dance spoke to me that He would resurrect the gift in His time.

For the next three years, I hardly danced. And often when I did in worship, it felt awkward, out of step, very different from what I had experienced in the dance ministry team.

 

In the fall of 2007, God brought dance to life again. I spent every night during the month of October in intercessory dance, learning from Him. It was profoundly freeing and humbling. But with this re-birth came a terrible ache. A painful longing for something more that still needed to be born and soon a wrenching realization that I had wounds that needed healing.

I heard from many around this time about their own gifting of dance and what God had taught them. It was encouraging and exhilarating but a woman I respect and cherish spoke against dancing. And her words ripped open wounds I hadn't know existed.

And it was good, because God began to heal these wounds.

 

(to be continued)