"I'm fighting a battle You've already won. No matter what comes my way, I will overcome."

The music swells, the voices rise, the volume fills the room. The dominant chord in the whole congregation is conviction - convinced of the truth that God has overcome all things. Just as in Old Testament Israel: the men of war would go out to fight, but the battle was the Lord's.

A song laden with imagery (as most good songs are), the words evince a feeling of belonging to the winning team. Deeper than a feeling, really - it is a declaration of identity, that this is MY group, these are MY people, this is MY God. And I have a deeply intrinsic share in that victory.

Then that moment comes when the song leader launches into the chorus one more time, but without the backing music. You know that moment - when the voices are enough and the truth of the words stands on its own. It removes a layer, and by doing so, it reinforces the grouping of what remains. That is, the voices in the congregation are solidified in the feeling of belonging to each other in this collective victory.

Except.... my mind went somewhere completely different. It seemed as thought the voices were drifting away, to somewhere far off. I felt out of place, like I was hearing it, but not really there as a part. I was not in sync with this collective moment.

They were passing through on their collective spiritual journey, and as they moved on, I remained. The train of eternal praise pressed heavenward, but I am left behind. What was left? The very palpable sensation that it was not MY moment, not MY group, and I simply did not belong.

And if that sensation had passed in a moment, I wouldn't be recounting it here. Passing sensations are one thing. They come and go, don't they? And we rarely spend the time of day on them. Perhaps we'll acknowledge their existence for a moment, go, "That was weird," and move on.

No - poignant mental moment imaged a far away, receding crowd singing a song of victory. That feeling of being left behind stuck with me for weeks. And that really describes it: left behind. There is a continuing moment out there where the Spirit is moving, God's people are unified, and I want to be there. Instead, the unsettling realization poured over me: here, in the empty space, is where I belong.

And why was my response so visceral? Well, for one thing, I don't think my experience in this case is terribly unique. Most of us have moments when we don't feel in sync with those around us, or when we wish we were with certain people somewhere else. We have times that we feel like we're missing out.

But this strange sense was that I was missing out on something eternal. That there is a sense of victory to be possessed firmly in this life, which I was not and am not holding. I felt that if I'm not emotionally connected in this way, continually, I don't belong.

And because I did not feel in sync with the moment, the message also seemed out of reach. The song is of God's promise to overcome, but my feeling illuminated a different tendency in my soul: that God's promises are for those people out there, but not for me.

Hard left turn now: tuning forks. A tuning fork is a particularly-shaped piece of metal which is designed to vibrate at a specific frequency. Of course, that vibrating frequency is what we receive in our ears as sound.

Now if you put two different tuning forks next to each other and strike one of them, the other one doesn't care at all. That's because the frequencies are different - they're not in sync. But if the two tuning forks are the same, that is, they vibrate at the same frequency, then striking the one will cause the other to vibrate too.

That's a picture of resonance. When the forks resonate, they vibrate together. And if the sound is reflected back at that tuning fork, it will resonate louder and louder.

We all have life images that will resonate within our souls. The image of being left behind by a joyful praising throng? Well, that was resonant to me. When these negative images hit that resonant frequency inside of us, they create a feedback loop in our minds and neural pathways which chokes out any opposing thought. The counterbalancing voices (whether inner or outer) get silenced.

We often think of encountering God as the set of things we've done right today. If we do our devotions, spend some time in prayer, etc. then we think we'll have a sense of the presence of God. Conversely, we feel like we have to deal with the things we've done wrong. When something finds that negative resonance within our souls, we are drained of all inner energy to keep fighting that battle.

Without that energy to continue on, we haven't just missed out. We also can't even conceive of trying to catch up.

Even the most positive messages can strike negative chords inside of us. When these feelings persist for weeks, we can rightly look at terms such as depression to describe that. Combine that with a visceral fear of missing the eternal that borders on panic attack, and we can talk about clinical anxiety.

And that missing out bit? We can view encounters with God as happening at a point in time. If you miss them, they've past, with no opportunity in the present, and no guarantee of the future. Of course, we're drained of inner energy when we see it that way - what would be the point of continuing? It's negative, to be sure, but it is also an opportunity to remember that Christ's intercession is always present, not just past.

There are movements in modern evangelical Christendom that are allergic to providing assurance. Rightly so, in some ways - when it comes to matters of the eternal, we do not want to give a false foundation. But the ways and means of the mind and soul are many. Sometimes, quite separately from matters of sin and salvation, the child of God has wounds. Sometimes, we just need to hear that we belong, that we're in the right place, that we're with the right people.

There's nothing wrong with the song, of course. And when we're aware of how these images are affecting our experience, we'll agree with that. Perhaps we are not in sync with the praising crowd. That's normal. We can't stay in tune with everyone around us at all times. To think we should, would be an unrealistic expectation.

But that doesn't mean we are out of Christ's hand, or out of reach of his prayers for us.

References:

• Shane & Shane. "You've Already Won (Live)." Performed by Shane & Shane. Fair Trade Services, 2022. Accessed September 17, 2024. Source.
• Image generated with DALL-E