The Stand

A few weeks ago, our Hope NorthBranch worship team was leading worship prior to the message. I was excited about the set as the church had initially responded well to "The Stand" by United Hillsong as our communion song and this was the first time I was integrating it into our main worship time.

Since I am huge Tim Hughes fan, I had worked "Almighty God" before "The Stand" as it would make for an easy transition since they were in the same key.

While we were practicing the week before, I posed the question to the worship team, "What do you think about asking the church to sit during 'The Stand' and ask them to stand during the building of the bridge?" Everyone nodded in agreement.

So when Sunday rolled around, I instructed the church to sit at the beginning of the song. When we hit the bridge, I could feel the Holy Spirit pulsing through my body and I said a simple prayer. The very last thing I cried out was, "Won't you stand with Jesus today?"

As I opened my eyes I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The church was standing, worshipping their guts out, and half of them had their arms raised in worship.

My eyes welled with tears, my voice started to break, and I almost lost it. I closed my eyes to fight back weeping before the church. I do wonder if I should have allowed it to happen instead...if I had stiff-armed the Holy Spirit at the time by closing my eyes and focusing back on the song.

But we're pretty good at that, aren't we? Shutting down the Holy Spirit when God says "Go!" I don't want to suppress the Holy Spirit any more.