5 Things the Ocean Taught Me About Worship
There’s something about the ocean that quiets you.
Maybe it’s the sound — the steady rhythm of the waves, never in a hurry. Maybe it’s the scale — standing at the edge of something vast and untamed. Or maybe it’s the mystery — how little of it you can actually see, even though it never stops moving.
Whatever it is, every time I walk along the shoreline, I feel something I can only describe as worship.
Not the singing kind. The soul-deep kind.
The kind that starts in your chest and rises to your throat before you even think to say a word.
Here are five things the ocean keeps teaching me about true worship — and maybe they’ll speak to you too:
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1. The ocean has rhythms you can't control.
The tide goes in. The tide goes out.
You can’t speed it up or slow it down. You can only respond to it.
Worship isn’t something we drive — it’s something we enter.
When we try to force it, we lose the flow.
But when we yield to it, it carries us further than we could ever go on our own.
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2. Stillness doesn’t mean nothing is happening
Some days the ocean looks flat. Still. Quiet.
But beneath the surface, there’s life teeming. Currents moving.
Power building.
Just because worship feels still doesn’t mean God isn’t moving.
Sometimes the most transformative moments come in the silence.
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3. The deeper you go, the less noise there is
Have you ever noticed how quiet it gets underwater?
The same is true in worship.
If you want to encounter God at depth, you have to go below the surface — beyond distractions, beyond performance, beyond self-consciousness.
Depth requires quiet.
And quiet opens the door to awe.
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4. Worship isn’t tidy
The shoreline is wild.
Foam. Driftwood. Wind. Chaos and beauty wrapped together.
Real worship is like that too.
It’s not always neat or scripted.
Sometimes it’s messy and raw and holy and real — and that’s exactly how it should be.
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5. You can’t measure it — you just have to experience it
You can study the ocean, sure.
But to truly understand it, you have to get in.
Same with worship.
You can know all the right words. Build the perfect setlist.
But the power of worship comes when you stop analysing it…
and start surrendering to it.
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Next time you lead, or kneel, or sing —
remember: you’re standing on the shore of something far bigger than you.
Let the tide carry you.
Let the silence speak.
Let the mystery pull you deeper.
Worship like the ocean.
Wild. Still. Deep. Uncontainable.
Because Sundays are just the beginning...
