In this episode Gina has a conversation with Zahriya Zachary about faith, obedience and trusting Jesus with your dreams.
Zahriya is a worship leader in Lubbock, TX, and an artist with the Bethel Music Collective. Zahriya is featured on Bethel Music’s most recent album Homecoming (2021) singing “Back to Life” and “Hymn of Heaven”.
Meet Zahriya Zachary
Gina:
Zahriya Zachary is joining me today and I actually met her for the first time as we were having our interview. Zahriya is a joy. She is an amazing anointed worship leader in Lubbock, Texas. She’s the newest member of the Bethel Music Collective. She is an incredible example of obedience at such a young age.
Really being willing to hear what God is speaking to her and to trust Him and take pretty significant steps of obedience and allowing the Lord to meet her there and lead her into places she never would have imagined or dreamed. Read about her journey and be encouraged, be challenged. I think you’re really going to enjoy this conversation.
God’s Calling
Gina:
Zahriya, welcome. I appreciate you being here and taking the time we’re meeting for the first time. A mutual friend, Niki Rice, who actually helps me and works with Stockton Ministries a little bit, connected us. She met you when she was on a mission trip to Texas. You are a worship leader in Lubbock, Texas. What church are you at there?
Zahriya:
I’m at Church on the Rock, Lubbock, Texas.
Gina:
You are also a Bethel Music artist. You recently signed with Bethel. You’re on their latest project, which we’ll talk about that. I went and listened to another podcast and there’s some pieces of your story that were really fun. I would love to hear where’d you come from? Were you raised in a Christian home, and that journey? Then we’ll get to the ministry stuff at some point.
Zahriya:
I’m from Spring, Texas, which is the north Houston area. My mom, on her own, raised me. I’m an only child, which is so fun. I grew up in private school, from the time I was a baby all the way up until high school. The Lord’s showing me the beauty of it.
I went to Lutheran school, while also going to a Pentecostal, predominantly African American church. We’re playing hand bells over here, singing hands, doing all the things. And then at my other church, there’s like anointing oil flying everywhere and people running in circles around the sanctuary, speaking in tongues. Two totally different worlds.
Now I’m seeing the beauty of it. The Lord has literally cultivated my heart to see the church. Then I went to high school and I played basketball for 10 years. I did basketball all throughout high school. That was my thing. Then my sophomore and junior year of high school, I had a knee injury and it ended that. It was wild. I wanted to play in college and everything. After that knee injury, “What am I actually doing?”
After that I took a turn towards the choir. I basically gave my all to choir from then on. That started the journey of music becoming a huge, huge part of my life. I played piano since I was like six, I took lessons. By that time it was my life. I would go to school, do music and then come home and do music. And the Lord worked through all of that evidently. That’s where that started.
After high school, I was super determined. I’ve always been an all or nothing kid. My mom told me, I learned how to tie my shoe at age of two, because I was relentless. She would come into my room and find me trying to tie my shoe in the middle of the night. She would ask, “What are you doing?” End of high school, I was like, “I am going to be successful.” And success to me, looked like finances and money and things like that.
I was like, “I’m going to be successful. I’m going to go be a lawyer. But I don’t want to be a boring lawyer, I’m going to be an entertainment attorney.” Because I could do music. I went to Texas Tech for four years and I graduated back in 2020 at the start of COVID was when my senior year was starting. When I first started going to college, I told myself, “I’m going to solely focus on school. I’m done with music. I’m putting music aside, because I have to focus on my academics. I’m going to get this done.”
That came and bit me in the butt for sure. Because up until that point, I had never led worship in my life. I had been in choir and done things like that, but never actually me, worship leading, in the church setting. I was like, “There’s no way I can do that.” My mindset was “I am not, I can’t, I’m not good enough for that.”
My freshman year of college, one of my best friends, her name is Taylor, who’s still one of my good friends now. It was my first time meeting her and I went to this college ministry thing and she was like, “Have you ever thought of worship leading?” And I was like, “No, never in my life.” For like four months she kept pursuing it. She was like, “I think that you should do this. I think you should try out for this. You should do this.” And I finally caved.
Gina:
You said, “I don’t think I was qualified.” In what way? Why did you think you weren’t qualified?
Zahriya:
I just had this mindset of people who are worship leaders and pastors have reached a new level of holiness. Being younger, I thought, “Oh I could never lead people. I could never do that. Because they know God in this profound way that I don’t.”
Gina:
I’m so glad you said that. I think we’ve created that culture in the Western evangelical world that the people on stage, the pastor, the person who’s leading worship, that they somehow have attained some sort of intimacy with Jesus, that’s so much higher. I tend to abdicate, I can abdicate my authority, my relationship with God, my spiritual maturity.
So much of the church is sitting back feeling like, “I don’t have purpose. I can’t do that. I can’t pray like they can, so I’m not going to pray for people.” I feel like we’re in a season where the Lord is calling His Bride, calling His sons and daughters up. “I love you. I’ve gifted you. Stand and believe the things that I’ve placed in you.”
Zahriya:
Two weeks ago, the Lord ripped out something out of my heart that I had been cultivating, that was terrible for so long. It was actually physically painful, “I can’t believe I’ve been doing this. I am sorry.” And the Lord just showed me, He said, “It’s okay to look at other people’s gardens and the things that they’ve cultivated and admire those things, take those things and be like, “I want my garden to be that fruitful. I’m going to take and learn from what they’ve done. Apply that to my life as well.”
But what you’ve been doing is comparing your garden, yelling at it, telling it to grow faster and actually cursing it versus being so proud of like, “Lord look what we have done so far.”” It’s shifted my mindset from that place of, “They’re so much better than I am. So I’m not worthy” versus “Look at what the Lord’s done in their life. I know He’ll do the same for me. And maybe even greater.” Because it only gets better through every generation. That’s how it’s supposed to be. He’s definitely shifted my mindset from that place of “I’m not worthy, I can’t do this.”
Gina:
Senior year, going into COVID, you put music aside. Then you had your friend who was like, “Hey, you should think about this.”
Zahriya:
She was like, “You should think about this.” And I finally just caved. It was so funny, because I knew nothing about the contemporary Christian music world, since I grew up in either hymns or gospel music. It was like no other. This church did contemporary Christian music. My first introduction was Alive In You by Kim Walker Smith and Forever by Kari Jobe. Those are a few songs that I had first started leading. There’s this whole new world out here that I knew nothing about.
That started this whole journey of learning songs that I never knew. But also learning how do I worship lead? It’s not just about me sounding good. There’s a whole new world that I’m literally diving head first into. So from freshman/sophomore year of college on, I had taken this deep dive into what is worship leading. What does this look like? Learning and asking questions from everyone I knew. I had no clue what I’m doing.
By the time I reached my sophomore year of college, one day I was walking to class and the Lord said, “I want you to do worship with your life. I don’t want this to just be something that you do on the side on a Sunday. I want this to be your life.” I thought, “There’s no way I’m supposed to go to law school. This is the plan.” And He said, “No!” At the time I didn’t really realize that it was the Lord talking to me. It was this overwhelming feeling that I had of like, “This is what I’m supposed to be doing.”
I called my mom. I remember the exact spot on campus that I did this, I said, “Okay mom, I’m not going to go to law school anymore. I’m still going to finish school. But I’m going to do worship.” And my mom’s like, “What? This was not on our radar at all.” and I was like, “Yeah, I don’t know how this is going to happen. I don’t know what, but I really feel like I’m supposed to do this with my life.” And my mom was like, “Well, we’ll figure it out. We’ll talk. Just finish college. I know the Lord’s going to take care of you.”
That really began the journey of this huge trust. I don’t think I’d ever trusted the Lord that much. Until the moment of, I’m not just trusting You with moments of my life, but I’m trusting You with my life. So that’s where worship leading started for me, in college basically, which wasn’t that long ago.
Gina:
How did you reconcile that first? You finally caved, you auditioned and then you’re leading these songs and you still have this thing in the back of your mind, “Well I’m not qualified. Those are the super spiritual people.” And it’s not just about singing. It’s about spiritually leading. That standing in that place is an odd place to stand. People are looking at you.
You have this preconceived idea from before you were standing in that spot and then you’re starting to recognize, that there is something other happening here. How do I spiritually discern? How do I spiritually lead? How do I be present with the Lord? But I’m also present with the room. How did you navigate? You said you asked questions, but what was that like?
You’re young and that’s a lot. In the last 10 years or so of worship culture, worship industry becoming so prevalent, social media, that there’s a lot of young people that aspire to be a worship pastor. You recognize what that is, and what that requires and what you’re navigating. So how was that for you taking that journey?
Zahriya:
It was super vulnerable and really hard. I have videos from the first time I ever led worship and I am look so uncomfortable. It is so cringy and I’m like, “I just want to save that girl. I just save you.” It was honestly a huge, huge part of it. There were two things, a huge part of it was just doing it over and over and over again, no matter how uncomfortable I felt, no matter how unworthy I felt, I’m going to do this. I’m going to lunge myself. I think the more that I did it, the more that fear and those thoughts shed off. Because you’re entering into the presence.
Gina:
Because it’s less and less about you.
Zahriya:
The more encounters I had with Him through worship, this is way bigger than me just singing a song or me looking good or sounding good. Another thing was that during that time, my prayer life with the Lord grew exponentially. Because I was like, “I want to hear from You in life, from the stage” And it’s like, I had heard teachings from all these worship leaders that were saying “If you learn how to cultivate a relationship with the Lord off of the stage, you can’t do that from this stage”.
Learning that I need to cultivate this relationship with the Lord in my daily life, so that His voice is the loudest thing that I will always hear. I’m always working on that. But those were the two things that really helped me to leave that mindset behind.
When you read the Word, all of these people that the Lord called to share the Gospel and to prophesy His coming, they weren’t all the best people. I feel better because, “David, you’re human too. You’re so human.” It makes you feel like the Lord is the person that qualifies me and makes me worthy to do this.
Patient in the Process
Gina:
I heard you share your story on the Nehemiah podcast. You shared a story about getting a job at a bakery and I love that story. Can you share that really quick? Because I just thought it was awesome.
Zahriya:
This is back in 2020. I had just gotten a job right out of college and I’d been working there for three months. One day I go into work and the Lord whispers to me, “Zahriya, they’re going to let you go.” And I was like, “Are You kidding me?” Because in my mind sometimes I’m like, “No, I don’t accept that for my life.” And I had gotten a text message to meet in a boardroom. And I get there and they let me go. I’m bawling my eyes out “What the heck Lord.” I’m like, “All right, You said this was going to happen, so fine.”
He said, “I don’t want you to look for a job until I tell you to.” I thought, “You’re telling me I lost my job right now. You’re telling me to not look for another job. We’re in the middle of a pandemic and it’s 2020” It was just a huge combination. For four months I sat and did nothing. It was four months and I just sat with the Lord and did what He had me to do for those four months. Getting to know Him more in different ways.
One day I was like, “I think I’m ready to work, because this is ridiculous. I can’t wait this much longer.” There’s a coffee shop here in town, which I’m still a baker at very part-time. They had a job opening for baker. And the Lord was like, “That’s your job. And I was like, “No, no, no, no, no. Are you kidding me? I’ve graduated with a four year degree. And you’re telling me to take this job.” And the Lord’s like, “Yep.”
It took everything in me, but I took that job. Which is so cool, because I’ve met one of my most dearest friends ever. Who’s my boss. But also the Lord was like, “I want to teach you about process, and how to not rush.” It was so hard. There are days I did not want to go in with all my heart. I’d be needing dough and He’s like, “I’m teaching you process.”
And I’m like, “I don’t want to learn process. This is painful.” There were days where I would literally be sitting around waiting for dough to rise. And the Lord’s like, “I’m teaching you process.” And He just kept saying that over and over and over again. That’s the story of how I got that job, which has been super cool.
Gina:
I don’t think we even live in a time in history that people can be patient for process. You can’t even sit down for five minutes in a waiting room without grabbing your phone and scrolling and looking and answering email or checking texts or doing something. I read a book. I really want to do a podcast with the author, her name’s Jenny Black. She has this teeny little book, How To Be Human in a Digital World.
She talks about the loss of boredom and that boredom is actually necessary. It gives us space for our brains to recalibrate. It gives us space to actually maybe process something that we didn’t allow ourselves to process. But we’re in a season right now where you go stand in line at the DMV. You’re not just standing in line, you’ve got a phone, you’ve got the internet, you’ve got so many things. That’s so sweet of the Lord to so lovingly go, “Hey, we’re over here. Get your butt in the kitchen. We’re gonna have a little lesson time.”
Zahriya:
I had never baked in my life before that job.
Gina:
Why did they hire you?
Zahriya:
Jesus. In my interview, the boss was like, “Do you know how to follow instructions? And I said, “Yeah.” And she was like, “Can you learn easily?” I was like, “Yeah, I think so”. She was like, “Okay, you’re hired.”
Gina:
That’s crazy. So you’re still baking once in a while.
Zahriya:
Yeah. Once in a while I have a shift, once a week now, uh, just because it’s just a good thing to go back to. This is life, this is good.
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Check the rest of this conversation Worship Over Performance
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