Worship in any Language

I didn’t expect Sunday morning to be so emotional for me. I was especially surprised by the giant tears rolling down my cheeks before the worship service even began. Three women were singing to a backing track to Jesus Messiah, by Chris Tomlin. They were warming up for the service, which would begin in about thirty minutes. Our band had already set up, and warmed up, and we were sitting in our designated seats in the first two rows, patiently waiting. That’s when I was ambushed by the music.

I’ve heard this song many times, and played the orchestra part, so it shouldn’t have been such a surprise. But hearing these women sing it in Italian caught me off guard.

Not because Italian is such an expressive and romantic language, which it is, but because it wasn’t English. It wasn’t the language I’m used to.

I get so lost in my own teaching and my own writing and my own reading and study, I forget God does Italian, too. And Hungarian. And Spanish. And Hebrew.

Later, during the actual worship service, the power of those Italian praise songs (that I assumed were English-only praise songs) hit me again. It was a straight shot to my heart. They sang “Che nome potent el” (What a Beautiful Name, by Ben Fielding and Brooke Ligertwood).

Once again, God have me a peek into how big He is, how unhindered by language He is. How geographically unbound He is.

God is so much more. So much bigger

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Cyndi and I are in Casoria, Italy, very near Naples. We are here with the Global Missions Project’s Metro Big Band, where we’ll play in several churches and a couple of bars. This is our fourth trip with this group; it’s a ministry we love, and we love to be part of. And one of the reasons we like doing this is because we’ve seen God use music in mighty ways to pierce hearts and open minds.

I just didn’t expect the pierced heart and opened mind to belong to me.