Cody Jensen
Worship Leader & Songwriter
Cody:
Have you ever said or thought, “Worship really wasn’t that good today,” or “I don’t know... worship just didn’t really touch me today.” I know I have. Many times. You think things like:
“I didn’t get the ‘Holy Spirit goose bumps.”
“I didn’t feel the warm fuzzies I feel when my favorite songs plays.”
“That worship band was B-A-D.”
“They didn’t play any hymns, so it obviously was full of emotionalism and wasn’t theologically sound.”
“They didn’t sing spontaneous choruses for 45 minutes, so it obviously wasn’t Spirit lead.”
…and the list goes on.
Here’s the thing though; worship isn’t actually about us. It seems elementary, but it’s sobering to realize just how subtle and how quick the shift from worshiping and magnifying the Lord into magnifying ourselves can be.
As a course correct, let’s look at Revelation 5. It says,
“Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they were saying:
“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
and honor and glory and praise!”
That is a LARGE number of crazy, beautiful, heavenly beings giving Jesus a unified sound of praise, saying he’s worthy of everything! Later in verse 13 we read,
“Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying:
“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be praise and honor and glory and power,
for ever and ever!”
What I see in this passage is an absolute, sold out OBSESSION by all of heaven and earth to worship and adore Jesus. What I don’t see is all these beings and creatures talking about how good the worship was, or how it was or wasn’t touching them. The heart of “One Desire” is a surrender of preference and a re-centering of what your greatest desire is. Returning to that heavenly simplicity of praising Jesus, and desiring with all our hearts just to be with Him.
When I lead worship, I like to actively take time in our rehearsal to do what I call “practice spontaneity”. This time as a group to press into the Holy Spirit and pause in a song or moment and step out to see where his “yes” or “breath” is…if the Holy Spirit is highlighting a song, new lyric, or even a chord progression to spend time in during the set. This may carry over to the worship set or it may just be a bit of intercession over the room before people come in. In any case, it’s an effort to pause and listen to what the Lord may be wanting in the moment. “One Desire” came from a moment where myself, my wife Ashley, and our cajon player Caleb Luttenegger took some time after rehearsal to just play and love on Jesus. It was pure and simple, and immediately felt like it had a sweetness to it. Later when the bridge and instrumentation came along, it made it that much sweeter. Everything from the piano, the guitar parts, the melody, Elizabeth’s vocal…it all seemed like such a pure musical representation of desiring the “one thing” (see Psalm 27:4), and signing up to a life dedicated and obsessed with the worship of “Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb”.
See if worship is purely about Him, I can worship Him in any context. I can worship Him in hymns. I can worship Him when there are no words on the screen. I can worship Him when the band is awful. I can worship when they aren’t playing my favorite song…because worshipping Him is entirely up to me and my heart.Whether I get the “feelings” or not (and believe you me, you will get THE FEELINGS), it’s about giving Him what He deserves. He’s my savior, my friend, my shelter, and He’s my end.
““...worship isn’t actually about us. It seems elementary, but it’s sobering to realize just how subtle and how quick the shift from worshiping and magnifying the Lord into magnifying ourselves can be.””
Lyrics
Jesus, my savior
Jesus, my friend
Jesus, my shelter
Jesus, my end
Oh just to be with you
My one desire
Oh just to be with you
My heart’s on fire
I’ll declare your beauty
And rejoice in your glory
And proclaim you’re worthy
And I’ll sing you’re holy
Elizabeth Luttenegger
Worship Leader & Songwriter
Elizabeth:
Luke 10:41-42, Passion Translation
The Lord answered her, “Martha, my beloved Martha. Why are you so upset and troubled, pulled away by all these many distractions? Are they really that important? Mary has discovered the one thing most important by choosing to sit at my feet. She is undistracted, and I won’t take this privilege from her.”
I need to get this baby tattooed on my arm so I see it every day. I’m a doer. A mover, a shaker, a creator. There’s beauty in that -- the Lord made me to be so. He created me to get things done, to do big things in His honor, to move fast and to trailblaze it all passionately and hopefully bring others along with me. But when I don’t temper that part of myself with the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, I become my own little monster, in need of a big lesson. Out of the Lord’s kindness and wisdom, He chooses to first gently nudge me with little reminders of the “one thing” I should be doing. The one desire that, above all else, I should be choosing. In certain seasons though, my monster grows, and I become a bulldozer, intent on my own wisdom and stamina and grit to guide me. Then, again, out of His kindness and wisdom and sovereignty, He can choose to use me while I’m forced to be benched because I chose to ignore His whispers. Sometimes, I have to have the rug pulled out from under my feet to keep me from continuing to run. Again -- out of His love for me as a Father, He uses these seasons to teach me, soften me, make me look more like Him, and actually make me lie down in green pastures.
““Let beauty be born out of the ashes of our surroundings and earthly vantage points. Soften our hearts again to His voice. Let these lessons not go unlearned. Let health and wholeness be restored in rest at His feet.””
In fact, going into recording “One Desire” for the Black Box project was such a season for me -- my husband runs as hard and passionately as I do, and one day after a long rehearsal we were driving home in the evening and had to pull over because Aaron was having heart-attack-like symptoms. We went to the ER, he was wrongly diagnosed with a panic attack, and it was more visits and weeks until we came to the real problem: Pericarditis, fluid in the sac around the heart. If he kept running life as hard as he was, he would run himself into the grave. Aaron was benched. For at least a month. He could do nothing that put strain on his heart, for fear the fluid would create friction and scarring on his heart tissue, which would put him at real risk for heart complications. No singing, no leading worship on weekends, no playing guitar, no working out, no lifting his 22 lb dog into his lap. Short walks would leave him winded. We were home-bound and had no other refuge than to call out to the one who saves to redeem this situation. Let beauty be born out of the ashes of our surroundings and earthly vantage points. Soften our hearts again to His voice. Let these lessons not go unlearned. Let health and wholeness be restored in rest at His feet.
That story starts during the last night of rehearsal and continued on through the live recording and the rest of the summer, but there was one night -- the first rehearsal of “One Desire” with the band -- where the idea of setting aside the noise of our own minds and choosing to truly invite the voice of the Father’s leadership into the process really stands out to me. Though the whole album was recorded live in the Veteran’s Studio Black Box Theatre at the La Crosse Community Theatre, we as musicians wrote and rehearsed our individual parts for months leading up to it. In the songwriting process, typically there will be lyrics and a main melody written by one, two, maybe three people, and maybe a guitar or a piano lead to go along with it. These things are recorded as a “scratch track” onto anything from an iPhone to a Mac, and then passed on to the musicians working on the project to write their respective parts to. There’s so many funny things that you have to bring into account regarding collaborating as musicians -- much of which revolves around remembering that you’re a part of a team, and no “part” written or band member is an island unto themselves.
With this in mind, as we rehearsed, we set ourselves on stage in a circle, everyone in the band facing each other. This rarely gets to happen in the setting in which we (personally) usually do music -- typically, worship sets are to lead others into His presence, so we face out and focus on the room a lot of the time. As we sat or layed down on the stage, praying and inviting the Lord’s voice and presence into this musical process, we got the ball rolling with the first couple songs. We recorded every rehearsal as well -- it gave us pointers as to where to look back on, what to fix, what things worked, and helped us not forget parts we wrote in the moment. Some parts were rough -- but others rolled off our tongues and hearts as if they were truly made for us to play and sing to our Abba in that moment.
When it came time for “One Desire,” I think the process had begun to click for us all. Our focus-- in the midst of busy seasons and personal lives, in writing and recording and prepping for the album -- was in the right place. Was on the right face, shining brightly and guiding us into deeper knowledge of His character, even as we played parts we had never played before, sung notes and lyrics we had never sung before. Facing each other in our circle, we got to make eyes with each other and use hand motions to guide where we were going. Though who was leading was usually clear, we could “pass the ball” to another if something was brewing in this big, primordial pot we were cooking up together. One of those moments happened during this song -- I was leading, and we got to “the end” of the song, after the big chorus after the bridge. Musically though, the band kept playing. We were hearing things -- parts were being written seemingly out of thin air, but we knew by where our hearts and minds were focused that something was being done in the spiritual realm that we wanted to be a part of.
Sometimes, there’s blessing on a spontaneous musical part or chorus. A truly new offering up to the Father and His ever listening ears. A gift born out of the desire to know Him better, to praise Him more fully, a gift born out of an empty auditorium and seven musicians pouring out a new offering like oil anointing His feet. This was one of those moments. I got a melody stuck in my head -- simplistic, no words, just musical notes that could build and dive around what my friends had created. I made eyes with Aaron to let him know I was going for something, and we started out. Again -- no words needed. Sometimes, do you feel that you truly don’t have the adequate words to lift up what you want to convey to the Father? Something was happening in my heart that I didn’t have words for, but I had a voice to lift up the groanings of my soul to Him with, no matter what. We ebbed and flowed and built it up to such a crescendo together -- not knowing where we were going except further up, further in with Him. I can’t describe it other than what it was -- magical. Not boasting anything in our own right or brilliance or perfection -- but there is something special about offering up a new sacrifice to the one who’s worthy. There’s magic when it finally clicks -- that the only thing that matters is to sit at His feet. To be real and get goofy with you, one of the ways I experience the movement or presence of the Holy Spirit is that my lips start -- I don’t know how else to say it -- vibrating. They literally tingle and sometimes make my voice shaky when I sing out when it’s happening. In this moment, though my lips felt like they were on fire, there was no shakiness in my voice or body. My foundation was sure. My feet were planted. My eyes were up, drinking in the brilliant face of Abba Father. Out of His kindness and love He (once again) led me by the hand to rediscover the one thing. The one desire.