Open Waters Podcast

48: Worship - The Art of Loving

• Josiah Sanchez, Lisa Campbell • Season 1 • Episode 48

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Have you ever wondered what it truly means to live a life of worship beyond just the music? In our 48th episode of the Open Waters Podcast, we're excited to share some personal milestones, including a graduation and an unforgettable Open Waters worship event. Josiah recounts a moving moment he experienced at church, where he felt a profound sense of love for everyone around him, seeing them through God's eyes. This experience sparks a deep and heartfelt discussion about the true essence of worship—loving others genuinely and living a life that reflects this divine love.

We explore how worshiping God goes beyond traditional settings and permeates every aspect of our daily lives. Taking cues from Jesus' interactions with Mary, Martha, and the woman at the well, we emphasize the importance of compassion, empathy, and being present. By slowing down and being available for God's work, we can notice those around us and make meaningful connections, all while maintaining healthy boundaries. This chapter highlights how to balance acts of love and the sacrifices they might require without placing ourselves at a disadvantage.

To wrap up, we recount an inspiring story of faith, where a young boy's unwavering belief helped lead an atheist towards accepting Jesus. This leads into a broader discussion on the importance of balancing vertical and horizontal worship, and how loving others is an integral part of this balance. We also touch on the role of prophetic worship and the power of authentic worship in touching hearts. Our episode concludes with an encouraging message about divine calling and the assurance of purpose, reminding listeners to stay faithful to God's guidance and the transformative power of worship. Tune in for an episode brimming with love, hope, and inspiring stories that underscore the profound impact of living a life of worship.

Open Waters Family,

Just wanted to say welcome, and thank you for joining us! We love you and hope you know that God loves you so so so much!

Here at Open Waters Worship ( OWW ) we long for an intimacy, and hunger for God. Where a people are hungry and fully in love with God, that is where revival happens. REVIVAL IS COMING!!!

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Thank you for being amazing and we pray blessings over you!

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Speaker 1:

Good afternoon or morning or night.

Speaker 2:

Whatever time it is, wherever you're at.

Speaker 1:

For the Open Waters Squad. Welcome to the 48th episode of the Open Waters Podcast. We're the squad, the squad.

Speaker 2:

The podcast and the vlog we have on YouTube at Open Waters Worship. Yeah, that's happening too, so if you want to see what we look like, YouTube's a place. Make jokes. You can go there and make jokes.

Speaker 1:

Put it in the comments.

Speaker 2:

Put it in the comments.

Speaker 1:

That's right.

Speaker 2:

Well, I'm really excited, josiah, to be recording another episode with you. We had a little trip and now we're back. Had a graduation, you've had things going on. Yeah, you have a new roommate.

Speaker 1:

I think we've mentioned this before on this podcast.

Speaker 2:

Maybe we have.

Speaker 1:

But brother graduated, so that's cool. No longer in high school, no longer a baby wavy, he's a little more grown up.

Speaker 2:

Little more grown up, so, josiah.

Speaker 1:

We also had open waters. We did that was amazing.

Speaker 2:

So last week yeah, we went to. The had open waters.

Speaker 1:

We did. That was amazing Last week.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we went to the Sunday format. We've been doing that once a month and it was very powerful. We had some people that were in from out of town and we also had just some of our regulars and it was really powerful. It was amazing. It's wonderful when we come together and just in a real intimate, authentic place, worship and the gifts flow freely, truly.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, Truly, and so it was a good time with people and just you know, worshiping God obviously.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So you guys missed it. You missed it, I'm sorry.

Speaker 2:

We hope you come out next time. Yeah, invite your friends.

Speaker 1:

You can check out the live stream on YouTube at Open Waters Worship. Yeah, just search up on YouTube Open Waters Worship and you can check out the live stream. It is past, but it is live streamed so you can check it out whenever. So go play back that stuff and join us in the past in worship.

Speaker 2:

So, josiah, our topic this week. We just want to kind of dive in yeah, what has been on your heart? What are we going to talk about today?

Speaker 1:

So I just want to start off with a story and there's just me at church and so this last Sunday or two Sundays ago, I guess would be, it would be and that's when I had kind of like this I don't want to say Eureka, but kind of like this eye-opening moment, revelation type of deal, where it's just like I got to church, we just finished worship and practice, we just finished worship and practice not worship and practice, but worship practice.

Speaker 1:

And it was right before we started prayer pre-service Whoa, I'm struggling today, pre-service prayer Jesus, and it was a good time. But I was struggling today, pre-service prayer Jesus, and it was a good time. But I was looking around and I just got kind of like, kind of like, just a feeling of like love for the people around me and it was just kind of interesting because it wasn't just like a, you know, like a familial love like me with my mom, but it's just like you, you know, every person deserves to be seen and known and loved, um, and it's just like the love of god for like was going through me and just I got to see them with the eyes of the eyes of the lord and just kind of like you know, this person's significant you know, and it just made me think back to and I started actually apologizing to the lord.

Speaker 1:

Like lord, I apologize for every lost, lost encounter I didn't have with somebody, because I just looked at them as an additional dialogue that I didn't want to have or some more time that I didn't want to spend, or something like that. You know and I'm not saying that we need to like like I was apologizing for cutting people off or like unhealthy relationships being disconnected. It was more just like the people that I don't know just not even putting in the effort to even try and so I think the title we'll put for this is just, uh, worship, the art of loving.

Speaker 1:

and it's just because worship isn't just music and you know the seven words for praise that's a part of worship, like we keep saying, like worship is to worship is also the way we live our life as well, like we mean that in the most serious of senses, like it truly is, like living a certain way that reflects who god is, is worship in it, in and of itself, and it also just shows God's love towards people when we get to love them, and that's why loving people is also an art and a worship, a form of worship, sorry.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean I think we've talked about this before that worship is not just singing or playing an instrument or that kind of a thing. Worship goes so much far beyond that. It's how you live your life. It's just we live our life in worship of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and so it oozes into every part of our life and should ooze out of us and in every situation, every encounter. And I I we will speak specifically to the traditional worship leading praise and worship band type thing later and apply it to that.

Speaker 2:

But I really think I am and I relate to what you're saying, josiah, because I found more and more as I pray with people, that I it's almost like you can feel the heart of the Lord towards that person and feel his love for them. And when I'm praying with people and just he's giving me, it's almost like you can feel what they're feeling. And it makes me think of when Jesus was with Mary and Martha and Lazarus had died and he knew like he's God. He knew that Lazarus was going to be raised very shortly and I mean he purposely came later, before he had died, you know, after he had died, and so he knew. And yet I feel like he was so moved with compassion and love for Mary and Martha and he just couldn't help but cry.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And so I think that in that moment while he was not, I mean, for us it's worshiping the Lord when we stop and we have compassion on somebody, when we stop and we allow ourselves to see the person in front of us as not just an object or just another you know person or encounter, but we actually see them as a real person. We see them, we know that, we love them. That is laying our life down for a friend, that is allowing ourselves to be open to experiencing you know what they're experiencing or to feel the heart of the father towards them, and that is a form of worship to the lord, and I think it's one of the most important forms of worship.

Speaker 2:

I mean it's all important.

Speaker 1:

But I mean God says you know everything hangs on loving him with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, loving your neighbor as you love yourself there's just so many times where Jesus in the bible, obviously Jesus is like the ultimate example of like worshiping through loving people, because he just like worshiping the father and loving people. You know, um, and it's just where, you know, all these different people throughout the bible came up to jesus with, with the need or something that they, they just were deficient in, like. I just think about the lady at the well, how she was just deficient in, you know, she just didn't have anybody to talk to. You know and know, and because she literally had to go out there, she was so despised by the other people of her city that they wouldn't go out to the well with her. Because she was just despised by them for how she was living her life, whether or not she was living her life in a godly manner.

Speaker 1:

It was a different story, but jesus still loved her through it and was like I'm gonna talk to you and I'm gonna call you out yeah, but I'm gonna love you and I'm gonna tell you who you are though yeah and so he loved her even still. And then also the lady that touched the hem of his garment like she just needed a touch from the lord yeah and he. It's not like he said. He dragged, jerked his, his hem away or his, I don't even his piece of clothing his garment.

Speaker 1:

that's a great way. Yeah, he dragged. He just jerked his garment away and said not today, I'm too tired for this. You know, I've had all these people touching me already and so it's like no, he let her touch him and then she was healed. And you know, it's not like he didn't stop everything and then condemn this woman. He loved on her and was like go and be healed.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know, it makes me think of something too, as you're talking, because, also, Jesus didn't?

Speaker 2:

He had masses of people around him, crowding in him. You know there's tons of sermons on these, on different aspects of this, but there was the one in which he took note of and the one in which he felt virtue leave his body, and I think that's a good lesson for us too is that, first of all, we're not the Savior, we're just living our lives in worship of the savior. That also means that we're sober, opening ourselves up and being allowing ourselves to be vulnerable by laying our lives down in worship and being vulnerable to feeling and to seeing and to knowing and to loving the person in front of us. Also, it doesn't mean that we have to be that way with every single person, right, mean that we have to be that way with every single person right. We just have to be commuting with God and being available and accessible for when he is wanting to move in a person's life, that we are laying our life down and doing that and worship to him.

Speaker 2:

And it doesn't mean it's for everybody, because we have to have boundaries and we have to have a space to be human and I think, especially in our society, in American society, we tend to be go, go, go, go go, next thing, next thing, next thing, when we need to slow down and just notice the people around us and see who God's highlighting and lay our lives down in worship yeah, we're very fast moving in that aspect yeah 100%.

Speaker 1:

I mean we.

Speaker 1:

It's worship is always a tandem exercise with the Holy Spirit, right yeah and the Holy Spirit's not going to ask you to do something that's going to put yourself at a disadvantage. You know, I'm saying he, he's got plans to prosper you, not to harm you, and that's not the holy spirit telling you hey, I need you to worship me, I need you to worship me through loving this person, but it's also going to require you to put yourself at a financially deficit place. Yeah, like, maybe I don't know, I'm not going to say that that's, that's what the holy spirit's going to do to you, but I doubt it 100, like nearly completely doubted. Like the lord's not going to put you at a disadvantageable place to make you love somebody or to have you love somebody, but he will ask you to do some things and sacrifice some things. Of course, because life comes with sacrifices and also god asks a lot of us. Too much is given, much is asked and so much is required.

Speaker 1:

And so when we love other people, like I said, this is a tandem exercise, so it really does require you to listen to the holy spirit into who and what he's asking you to do to love this person. And so when you're at a coffee shop, does he ask you to give an extra big tip, because maybe this person, like, if he's telling you to do that, that's okay. If he's telling you to maybe, I don't know just chat with him a little more, that's okay. That's simple. A lot of the things that god asks us to do, asks us to do, almost seems like thoughts we are thinking ourself and it's just we just pass by, like because it's almost something we just don't want to do, or or it's too simple, right?

Speaker 2:

yeah, I think it just requires us to be available, I think, and to just really be sensitive to the Lord in the moment.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Really, it's all it boils down to, and then we love them the way that we sense the Lord is showing us to love them.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

I mean a long time ago, and I've probably expressed this on here before and I've talked to you about it I really was struck by the fact that every person that you pass is an eternal being. I know we know that in our heads, but there's our head, brain and our heart brain. And that journey, that six-inch journey, or whatever it is to your heart.

Speaker 1:

Eighteen-inch journey, yeah.

Speaker 2:

You know, like really, when you realize you are encountering an eternal being in front of you. Every time you encounter a person, that's really incredible when you think about it.

Speaker 1:

I think about it like this too you think about them as eternal beings. I also think about them as every person has gone through different experiences and each person has a different history and ancestry, and so it's just like it has taken a bunch of different combinations and different events in their lives to make this person happen and so it's just like we will never understand, like when we meet somebody who, what makes them up?

Speaker 1:

you know, I'm saying completely yeah, and you can have someone. You could sit down with them for hours and still never get to the entirety of their life. It's's true that there's a single person, yeah, and that every person we meet has an individual and unique experience.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, which is really cool. And God knows their whole story, yeah, and he knows their generations. I mean, he's outside of time, yeah, so you get privy to things that only he could know and privy to their stories, yeah, and I really I love that. Actually, I have always been drawn to people's stories, because everybody has a story, their story.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I think the reason that we brought this one up is just because this world needs love and we just we need people to care about each other. You know this whole thing where we just have disconnected from each other as the body of Christ I would even put into the same category we just are so disconnected and we just become so self-focused when we're not caring about our neighbor and loving our neighbor as ourself. We've just become love our God as our God and then love ourselves as well. You know, and it's just it's time to get back to being selfless. The church in the Church of Acts would literally sell their houses to help the needy out. They were so selfless because they were so on fire for God. And now we're on fire. We say we're on fire for God, but we're not willing to give a couple of dollars to the person that's on the street.

Speaker 1:

I know there's judgments against them, but you know what? It's better to act out in love and maybe be misplaced love than to never act out in love at all, because love is going to reach that person regardless and you never know what's going to come of it, because love is a seed, and so when we allow god. We are walking tandemly with god and he's just planting these seeds. We never know what kind of ground it's going to land on. Might be the hard ground, it might be the the fruitful ground and it might be the rocks. We never know what kind of ground it's going to land on. It might be the hard ground, it might be the fruitful ground and it might be the rocks. We never know.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, I think I'm having a situation come to my mind where, so my husband and I, dan and I were a few weekends ago in Indiana for one of our son's rugby competition national rugby team and I was really aware because he graduated, and I was really aware because he graduated and I was really aware that this could be the last time that I see some of these people. And we had gone to a meeting before we left and I really I like I couldn't go to sleep that night. It still makes me feel emotional and I actually had dreams about the people. I was just so moved by God.

Speaker 2:

I really want these people who none of them, I can confidently say, none of them are believers in the in the sense of Christianity. Um, they, they either don't, you know, have any kind of uh, connection with God in that way. I'm not saying only he knows who's saved and who's not, but, and then others are a part of another religion that is, you know, based on works and things like that, a cult, and so, and I love them dearly, they're good people, but it just my heart was so grieved and so moved and I was just like Lord please, let us be a light to these people. Let us just let us have influence on what could be the last time that we have encounters with them. Now we may go to some games and we may see them, but I genuinely cared about these people and I've never.

Speaker 2:

I I'm not an evangelist by nature. I do love moving prophetically, you know, outside of the four walls of church and inside the four walls, but I so there is that, but I'm not drawn to evangelism. But my heart was overwhelmed with the burden of these people and so we, we just prayed and we went and there there are actually some crazy situations that happened and God really used Dan and used me, and I had so many people tell me Lisa, you were just like the bright spot in that trip. Lisa, there's such a light inside of you. You know that's how they describe it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I wasn't necessarily like praying with them or preaching the gospel. I was just loving on them and being present with them. And you know, even there was a situation where one of the kids got dropped on his head and they thought he broke his neck. And we already had that happen this season, that a kid actually broke his neck and god did miracles in his life and he actually had a jersey that was made that says miracle man, because he was, he had broken his neck, they had confirmed him everything they were going to do emergency surgery and it ended up that he didn't have to have it. It made national news. It was pretty crazy and I had asked the Lord. I was like Lord, I pray for these kids. Why did this happen? And the Lord said you do not know what I'm doing and so, um, so I again was the. The dad was on the field, uh, praying, you know, like they, like they were, they were deciding if he can have to be taken to the hospital and that kind of a thing. And as the dad was walking off the field, not knowing what was happening with his son, I did say when another another person with me said we are praying for your son and he came to me, came up to me at the senior banquet this last week and said I just want to let you know how much it meant to me that you were praying for my son. So so some of it was literally praying and talking that way, but a lot of it was just me loving and being present with the person in front of me and having conversation and genuinely authentically interested in them. Even so, many of them are Mormon even, just like I'm generally interested in, like how does some of their kids are going off for missions. It's just kind of a tradition that they do, um, and I'm, like, what's the process for that? Like genuinely interested and I care about all these boys and so I, I I think that's a pretty incredible thing and then that the lord moved in such a way and again, like I said, sometimes it is praying, sometimes it is having those conversations and sometimes it's just being present with the person and loving them. You know Another.

Speaker 2:

Can I bring up another story? So and this is just a cool story where it was specifically preaching Jesus. It was at Ben and Jane, your brother, one of your brother's weddings, and, um, we I have a sister who is pastors helps pastor, a church in Maine and her little son. He's not so little anymore, but it was what four years ago. And he, he, um, is. He has some learning things, some some different types of. He's behind in some ways, but extremely intelligent and extremely loved the Lord, like he wants to be a pastor.

Speaker 2:

Anyway, we were at the wedding and my friend's son was there. I was, uh, son-in-law was there and he had not yet accepted Jesus. He was declared, you know, atheist, so to speak. He was studying and he was going to church with his wife, but he wasn't there yet and little Jonathan said to him hey, have you asked Jesus into your heart? And he had not yet done that, but it was shortly after that he asked jesus into his heart. So a little, a little child, who by some would say he's like behind or whatever, did this with another human and god and worship the lord, you know, and his child likeness and that and that led to him getting saved and making that final step to get saved. So we just don't know and and we don't know who's in front of us or where they're at or what they're doing, which I think also bleeds over into leading worship yeah, 100.

Speaker 1:

I mean you just got to love people because there's certain there's. This is we can talk this later but there's a couple different types of worship. There's vertical worship and horizontal worship, where we're worshiping God for the things he's doing amongst the church and worshiping God for who he is and what he's done.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And so when you love people, it comes from a place of do that horizontal worship and loving people through what we're singing. Horizontal worship and loving people through what we're singing. And maybe somebody needs to hear this song because they're going through some certain circumstance where they're going through something in their life that they just need to hear this and we're going to sing this song because we want them to be, to feel like they've been seen and their love. You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 1:

And also it requires you to love people because you're on a team, obviously.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I know there's a careful balance between just kind of catering to the people, where it becomes people centered and people come in and you create an environment where what am I going to receive today? But there is also a balance between that and being like God. I'm blocking out every single thing and it's just about you because it is. But if you are going to make it just about God, listen, he loves people and it's not going to be long before you're going to hear his heart for the people that are there. So when you're leading worship and I think we are bent towards this I am a feeler too personally, so I can sometimes hear thoughts in the room or I can feel what's being projected in the room and then the Lord gives me a word, or I've learned to just listen when it keeps coming up to release that, and so it is a part of us nationally, in our culture, to have prophetic worship. Where it is, we're ministering to the people, we're ministering to the Lord and he then moves us into um.

Speaker 2:

Sometimes it's separate, sometimes it's simultaneous, but ministering to the people, and I think that that's important too, because you don't know just like you don't know who you're passing in a room, you don't know who you're standing before and where they're at in life and this may be the only time and so you get the opportunity to sing what the Lord says on your heart, to play with the Lord has on your heart, to speak with the Lord says in your heart, or to be silent. You know you could be modeling for a future leader too, how to lead worship, and so I think making it about the people is important. We do, but we don't't. It's a very, it's a balanced thing totally.

Speaker 1:

It is a balance. I mean a new creation. We tend to be much more concerned about worshiping god and proclaiming who god is yeah, that's great, um, but I also.

Speaker 1:

We came up, we thought we talked about this a little bit ago and it's impossible to catch fish if you never go out to fish. But you're always building up the storehouse. The storehouse, yes, needs to be built for to store the fish you catch, but if you never go out and catch fish, you're never gonna put fish in that storehouse. And so if we're never loving people outside the four walls of the church, we're never going to express the love of god to the world right yeah and so the love of god is not meant to stay within the four walls of the church.

Speaker 1:

It was made to go out and to be amongst the world and to transform the world.

Speaker 2:

Yeah and so so it's both inside the church when we're leading worship literally leading worship with music and it's outside the church when we're leading worship with music and it's a lifestyle of worship apart from worship with music and a band and all that kind of stuff so it's an art itself.

Speaker 1:

There's too many different techniques you can use. Like you said, it's the worship in the church, worship outside the church yeah and so it's just some cool stuff.

Speaker 1:

We'll have to talk about the vertical and the horizontal that, but also when you're saying that the worship leader is ministering to the people. That's actually like some I was talking to manny about a couple weeks ago about it we'll have to talk about, like go into depth with him a little later. But he said there was different priests and levites, um, pretty much ordained to do to do that and just to minister to the people. There's some that were called to do that, to minister to the people. Then there were some that minister to the Lord specifically and Then so it was. There's just different sex within the Levi tribe.

Speaker 2:

I would love to talk about that.

Speaker 1:

We'll talk about that later.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

If you guys have any questions about what it means to love people and you know just how to love people better my mom's a great source. She knows a lot about this, so feel free to reach out to us at open water worship at gmailcom, or put a comment in the chat. We'd love to answer your questions and to possibly get you some help, if you'd like.

Speaker 2:

We'd love to love on you too.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and so I would just encourage you guys, as you're kind of processing what we've kind of discussed in this podcast, just to maybe think about one or two people that you've missed the chance to love. You know, maybe some people walk down the street that you're you felt inclined to talk to, or maybe it's a coffee shop vendor that you, like you'd like to talk to a little more, or maybe it's just somebody at your church you didn't go up to and pray for, and just you know. I would encourage you, like I did when I was at my church just kind of apologize to the lord, because if he's not, if you don't, if you don't yield to what the lord's telling you to do, he will use somebody else, because what he has set in motion will get done and so.

Speaker 2:

But he's going to use you, no matter what, because you still have breath in your lungs so don't feel dismayed because he's still got plans for you so and don't be afraid, when you're in literal worship on the stage, to be like David and to be like Mary, because you never know how that can minister to a person's heart in the room. Yeah, an eternal being.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, All righty. Well, we love you guys and we hope you have a great night.

Speaker 2:

Bye-bye, take care.

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Josiah Campbell Sanchez

Host
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Lisa Campbell

Host

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