As I reflected over 15 years at Bethel one primary lesson stood head and shoulders above all others. Did I learn to worship. Many have asked me as I transition to living in Europe how I will cope with missing ‘Bethel Worship.’ My reply has become that my concern is not in missing Brian & Jenn and their wonderful team but in missing ‘Him’. I am not saying this to be clever but to emphasize that Bethel Music’s goal is not that we learn to sing along with the latest song but that we become worshippers and lovers of the presence of God. I will take ‘Him’ with me wherever I go and that is the goal.

I am not a singer, my wife has on occasions even asked me to stop singing but I am a worshipper. The test is not about the quality of my voice but about the condition and posture of my heart. For 15 years nearly every meeting which I have attended has begun with worship and nearly always not merely a song or two but an extended time of experiencing the presence of God. It has led me to love these times and to develop my contribution to my favorite and I believe most potent moment in a meeting. It is the moment typically called transition or closing worship. That moment when a congregation has become present in the presence and when anything can happen. But it is not to be limited to attendance at a meeting but to become a constant awareness of His presence.

So did I learn to worship and did you. The simplest test is to reflect on what rises up from your heart in the good times and the bad. Is there a song, an expression, is your life a daily offering given to him. You may have visited Bethel for a healing, for a conference or to live and I will guarantee that you will have experienced some of the best worship on earth, but the greatest question is not whether you enjoyed it but whether you left as a worshipper.

Our worship here on earth is our opportunity to do here what we will never get to do in heaven and that is to worship God in the midst of things which we do not understand. And so in every season let us be able to say:

“Here I am to worship

Here I am to bow down

Here I am to say

That your my God

You’re altogether worthy

All together wonderful to me.”