Let's Sing With The Whales!

My heart is so full of all I want to convey and share here! It is literally brimming over! Friends...we serve an incomprehensibly AWESOME God! I have been thinking of how best to share what God has so graciously taught me this weekend...and it seemed like an impossible task to try recap all that had happened. I am picturing in my mind a post that drags on and on forever and my readers (all three of you...) :] when they finally came to the end having long grey beards, or if you are a woman long grey chin whiskers as a dear friend calls those unfortunately placed hairs on us ladies.  And I felt like the best way would be to break it down into three sections encompassing the wonders God has performed in my heart and I am sure thousands of others attending and streaming this conference.

So...the three sections are;

 1) How my view/understanding of God has changed.

 2) How my view/understanding of man has changed.

 3) and lastly as a result of this knowledge what is my response? 

It is only fitting we start with God so as Inigo Montoya said....."begin...."


The first session of the 2011 Desiring God National conference 'Finish the Mission' was taught by Louis Giglio. I had never heard him speak before and really knew nothing about him. So I had no real expectations one way or the other. And to be honest going into the session I had been up for 33 hours or so and I was exhausted. As we began the session with worship I felt a deep sense of disappointment in my hearts response. There was no passion, there was no excitement or anticipation for what God was going to do. So what did I do?... I said God just must not want me to learn anything tonight, I am clearly not in the right frame of mind, so I sat down, closed my eyes and dozed off for the next hour.....well that's what my flesh would have loved to do...but God had other plans! Plans to show me His unfathomable glory! 


So despite my weariness God gave me the grace to call out to Him! I cried out to Him...."Lord!" Please give me grace to hear from you! Send your spirit! I pleaded with Him! And when we pursue the thing the Lord loves (and make no mistake the Lord LOVES to reveal His glory to us) He delights in providing what we seek! I received an energy and an excitement from Him and was ready to hear and delight in Him!


As I was writing this I started recapping this sermon..and I just felt like that wasn't the best way to go. You can all and I would strongly encourage you to listen/watch these sessions on desiringgod.com on Monday and will benefit much more from that than my meager attempts to recap it. So my desire is simply to share what God did in my heart and hopefully it will be an encouragement to you...if nothing else it will encourage me as I get to relive it and meditate on our glorious God. 


The message God spoke into my heart during this session was "I am so much greater than you can ever imagine, so much more glorious than you can fathom, you will never come to an end of Me and you my child will spend eternity discovering more and more of My glory! And it is sweet indeed!" 

"Taste and See that the LORD is good." Psalm 34:8

One of Louis's points was that God does not require or need our worship. We are not doing God a favor by singing praise to Him. Does the Lord delight in our worship...of course. Does He need it......no. Then Louis demonstrated this to us in such a way that I will never forget. 

He read to us from Psalm 148 

1  Praise the Lord!Praise the Lord from the heavens;praise him in the heights!2  Praise him, all his angels;praise him, all his hosts!3  Praise him, sun and moon,praise him, all you shining stars!4  Praise him, you highest heavens,and you waters above the heavens!

Then he demonstrated how the stars are doing just that....praising the Lord. He showed us three different stars and played the song they are singing. One sound like rotatory belt...(is that a thing?) one was like a bass drum and my personal favorite whose name I cannot remember made the most beautiful harmonic 'humming' for lack of a better word! Mind boggling! The stars are SINGING! I hope that grabs you! But if it didn't...there's more.. he read on...

7 Praise the Lord from the earth you great sea creatures and all deeps, 8 fire and hail, snow and mist, stormy wind fulfilling his word. 

And then he got the whales in on it!  He played a recording of a whale song and it was so beautiful! Moment by moment the image of God grows larger and larger in my mind and my self image grows smaller and smaller! Let me tell you...there is nothing more satisfying that glorying in God! NOTHING! That's what God created us for!  Now at this point my mind has already been blown away...but God isn't done yet..not by a long shot. 


Louis then played for us a mash-up of the the stars and the whales worshiping the creator...and I wept! I wept in awe of the majesty of God, i wept at the depravity of my own heart and how easily I am mesmerized by this world, and I wept at the stupefying mystery of God's undeserved love for us! And then Louis added Chris Tomlin's song "How great is our God" on top of the mash-up and it became a glorious symphony of voices and stars and whales praising our Lord. As I stood there singing with Gods creation I was able to take my eyes off my self and fix them wholly on God and I trembled at His feet! It is a moment I will never ever forget! 


There is so....so.....so much more I could say...but let me just conclude by saying this; the Lord of the universe, the God who created singing stars and whales, galaxies our eyes will never see, the one who is infinitely loving, infinitely just, infinitely glorious, and infinitely holy is graciously inviting us to "taste and see that he is good"! What a privilege...what an honor!  And friends make no mistake He is good! He does not disappoint! Worship will and is happening with or without you!


So come! Join in creation in worshiping our creator! Nothing else will satisfy you soul!