Honest Praise

"Of a childlike faith, and of my honest praise. Of my unashamed love."

 People often question as to why I am so passionate about wanting to become a teacher. There are many reasons, of course, but one of the biggest reasons is because I absolutely love how you can learn so much from a child. The best times for these are when they are just being themselves. It's true. It's honest. It's vulnerable. It's REAL. I love learning, especially from the kids who I teach/will teach someday.

Tonight I had the opportunity to go to Winter Jam 2012, where I enjoyed the music from 10 Christian bands  that were all amazing. It was a great night, in the end. At this place, I found myself absolutely blown away by how much I learned from a little girl sitting next to me. She probably doesn't even know that she taught me a lesson tonight-after all she was simply enjoying herself and being true, honest, vulnerable, and real- but man did she teach me a lesson in worshipping tonight.

See my girlfriend and I arrived at the concert not early enough to get in the front of the line, which consequently caused us to get seats not ideal to our thoughts on the drive over. They weren't bad seats at all (especially compared to the nosebleeds we were in last year) but they were still not our desired seats. I found myself  completely irritated at the beginning of the night. I was trying to get into the music and truly hear God speaking to me, but just couldn't because I was too caught up in where we were sitting. 

I look to my left, and here is this girl that had to be no older than 10 years old just giving everything she can up to the performers, and of course, to God. She was singing along, closing her eyes, raising her hands, and just surrendering her praise to the One who deserves it. She didn't care that she was to the side of the stage and couldn't get the full effect. She was there to have a good time, and a good time she had.

I learned a lot from that. From seeing such a young girl acting more mature than I was at the time, I gave myself a check and realized that it wasn't about seeing the performers- necessarily. I learned from that girl that it was about letting God hear your praise, and it was about nothing else. I could still hear the music, and see pretty much everything that was going on up on stage, so why was I putting up this wall? Sometimes actions speak louder than words, and this little girl's actions spoke chapters to me. 

We have got to fully surrender ourselves to God with our praise. Until we live completely for Him, we're always going to nitpick our circumstances and miss out on the "childlike faith" and "honest praise" of which God completely deserves.

And not to mention- this girl knew EVERY WORD to all of the Skillet songs played tonight. Yeah. I was impressed.

And so it goes...