Cambodia Journal: Day 2:1

Today is the Lords day, as P.Mo kept punching in.

This morning we met at 8am for some time of worship and intercession. I am continually feeling more and more comfortable with leading worship with the team and offering up a more authentic side of my private worship with them. I hope, first and foremost, that it is glorifying to Jesus, and secondly that it allows them to really let go and worship fully as individuals.

To be honest, I don’t think that a lot of people at my church have experienced the truest forms of my song writing and worship. I think part of that is the insecurity of wondering whether they’d like it or not. Nothing can be harder for an artist than truly showing yourself and feel rejected because people don’t “feel” what you are doing, or that they don’t like your purest form or style. That’s part of the reason so many artist “sell out.” They’d rather be liked, than live with the fear of not being liked.

None the less, we finished up a sweet time of worship and ate our crackers and bread for breakfast on the way to church. We arrived a few minutes before they let out the service before us. They have two in the morning, 8am and 9:30am. They also have one in the afternoon at 5:30pm.

We got a radio receiver so that we could hear the translation. We made our way to the front where I noticed a good deal of foreigners at the church. It’s pretty amazing to me that so many foreigners who don’t speak the native language come to listen on the radio receivers. I believe it’s also a testament to what God is doing there as well.

A prayer was said, and a way with worshipping we were. The songs were in Khmer as well as the preaching. It was quite a powerful time of worship. As foreigners you truly have to want to engage in worship personally to really have a powerful time of communion with God. I think it would be hard for a new believer perhaps to really figure out what’s going on. Not impossible, but not super easy as well. We not only tried our best but really asked God to come encounter us in that place. We have a very strong team, and I believe that our prayers were powerful that morning, both as our team and as a church.

I kept praying through song, “Lord have your way, have your way with me.” He was so faithful in working in my heart that morning.

While we were singing we sat on one of the songs for a long while to soak in the presence of God and to pray out to the Lord for the city and the people.

It was some time into that last song that the Holy Spirit just rushed into me like a strong wind and took my worship with Him. There I stood, broken in prayer. I stood there crying my eyes out, not even sure how I found myself there, but glad I was. I was experiencing Gods presence in that moment. An overwhelming feeling that is in reality somewhat hard to explain but altogether lovely. It had been a long time since that had happened. In fact, usually the only time that happens in my private worship, I rarely encounter God in such a personal way in public. It was quite funny afterwards because here I was, this white guy, towering over everyone crying my eyes out, and trying to clean myself up as the girls around me from the church kind of looked confusedly at me. “What happened to him?” I’m sure they were thinking. I always feel funny in public when I am totally seized by a moment and others around me aren’t. But, it was such a blessed encounter with God, even though I was a bit embarrassed afterwards.

As we finished up, I sat down for a moment just thankful and amazed by Gods presence in me.