I did the best as I could to participate, but by the end I was sitting in the back of the convention hall and I felt more of a spectator then a worshipper.  But that was alright, I didn’t understand the experience going on around me, but I watched and I learned, and that was alright.  I felt uncomfortable in this worship style, but that was alright.  I knew I would grow from this experience, I just didn’t know how.  I did not get to point of raising my hands in the air, but I did stand up a few times and clap along, albeit, somewhat off beat, but that was alright.  By this time, I realized that God was giving me an experience that would add flexibility into my life.

            This worship service started filled with high energy music which lasted anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half.  Then followed numerous prayers, and calls to worship and the Spirit filled the room, the preaching was inspirational. 

            I left Dallas, reflecting on the experience and drawing correlations to being called to go to the margins and offer God’s love to all people no matter how uncomfortable it may be for us.  It may be just as uncomfortable to those we are helping as well.  When we go to these uncomfortable places we experience God in a new way.  We are stretched and we leave no longer being the same person we were when we started.   

            I went into an uncomfortable place, a different worship style in this case, but I experienced God there, so richly poured out into everyone in the room.  The room had a buzz, and as an introvert, it exhausted me with all its high energy flowing in and through and around the people gathered there.  But yet it was so beautiful to watch.  I did some stretching in Texas, and I became more aware of the feelings attached with being uncomfortable and being called to uncomfortable places.  Sometimes it might take a while, but in the end if you keep looking for the God moment in the midst of all the uncomfortableness, you’ll find it.

            Have you ever been stretched beyond your comfort level?  Stretched to a place where you feel the burn and know that the end result is going to benefit you, but the actual stretch is really uncomfortable.  I challenge you to continue to go out and be God’s witness to the world, offering unconditional love and acceptance to all God’s children.  And I pray that your mind be stretched so that it may never go back to its old dimensions.