Recently I started rereading a short but wonderful book by Francis Schaeffer called Art and the Bible. In it, he talks about the WHOLE being being transformed by Christ, not just the spiritual being. Souls are not the only thing redeemed. All domains of being are important and cannot operate without the other, and everything we do affects everything we are. Our minds, brains, thought, souls, hearts, actions, bodies are all redeemed and transformed by Christ. In Christ I live AND breathe AND have my being. Every part of me is his.
I am a dancer. The concept of the physical body, as well as the creative and imaginative mind, being redeemed and transformed strikes a deep chord with me. In worship this past Friday night I danced my heart out in praise for the first time in a long time. When I do this, I surrender my body for the Lord to move at will. I can find myself dancing to express pure joy, dancing to express a feeling or praise, dancing with urgency in order to break some sort of stronghold in the Spiritual world, dancing a prayer or desire, the list goes on. Sometimes I literally feel the presence of the Lord dancing next to me, leading me around the dance floor, a duet with my King of Kings. I create a dance because the Lord has taken hold of me and is literally moving me. This is the most powerful experience of bodily redemption and surrender I have ever experienced.
In embracing this surrender of my whole being to the workings of my Heavenly Father, there is a freedom and joy that I wish I could begin to describe. It is like any and every thing that carries weight in my life completely disappears and I am light as a feather, flying on the wings of heaven, wanting nothing but to continue in the presence of my beloved. It is a state of complete freedom, complete contentment, complete peace, and complete joy, rich with the power of God’s presence, love, and grace.
For some reason, I find that many of us Christians are scared of bodily expression and surrender. I know of several churches that flat out ban dancing from their premises, and I know of even more where for someone to raise their hands in worship, much less dance would raise an uproar. It makes us uncomfortable. I dance in worship a lot, but I still have to fight a little tinge of fear and apprehension before I dance. Why does the concept of complete bodily surrender, especially in structured worship, scare us so much? And taking that even further, why is the idea of unleashed creativity, imagination, and expression so often suppressed or ignored?
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