Praise is the Breakthrough: An Interview with Kelanie Gloeckler

by Kathi Smith
Summer 2017

Kelanie Gloeckler uses the gifts of the Spirit as she worships — to usher people into the Lord’s presence and bring anointing for healing.

In Scripture, the Lord uses praise to Him as a direct confrontation against darkness (Joshua 6, Exodus 15:1, 1 Samuel 16:23, 2 Chronicles 20:22, Acts 16:25–26). At Christian Healing Ministries, we worship during our conferences and during prayer ministry. We play music in our chapel as prayer recipients wait for their prayer appointments. We have what we call soaking prayer with music playing in the room to “invite the Lord to inhabit the praises of His people” (Psalm 22:3). Praise is the place all of us intersect with the Lord whenever there is a fight to be had on the battlefield of life.

Kelanie, singer, songwriter and worship leader, has been a friend of Christian Healing Ministries for many years. In this interview, we are pleased to give you more understanding of who Kelanie is and how she operates in worship.


Kathi: When did you go from loving music to loving worship?

Kelanie: Honestly, I loved worship first. I was a pastor’s kid so I grew up in and around music, but it was always Christian music. I was fifteen when I connected more deeply and started playing the guitar in youth group. I also played clarinet in the church worship band. As I grew older, that went deeper and I received more revelation concerning what I call spontaneous worship and prophetic worship and the kind of worship that I flow in now.

Kathi: Can you define prophetic worship?

Kelanie: Prophetic worship happens when we step from the place of singing to God into the place of hearing back His response to us in song.

Kathi: I see you as a worship leader who invites us into the presence of the Lord. You invite us to do more than just sing along to words on the screen. Was there ever a shift in focus for you as a leader? If so, when and how did that happen?

Kelanie: There were probably a couple of “moments” or “seasons” for this change in me. When I first started leading worship, I was in my youth group at an Assemblies of God church. When I was in college, I first heard someone lead worship which went beyond the lyrics of that particular song and began to do what I now call “flow” into prophetic worship. I experienced the presence of the Lord in a profound way. There was something in me that really resonated with what was happening. It was then that I had that “knowing” about my life — this was something I was made for.

During this time, there was a worship leader named Kent Henry; he was the first worship leader I heard flow prophetically. Being exposed to that was deeply impactful. I was also exposed to MorningStar Ministries during the mid 90’s. I heard some of their recorded music from their live conferences and again, I had a profound response. I decided to go to MorningStar a few times and these worship experiences marked me. I then began to practice engaging in that prophetic flow in my own personal time with the Lord and when I led corporately. It led to making space for the Holy Spirit. I waited on the Lord to give me things to hear, then I would sing spontaneously.

In my younger years, I was blessed to be around a lot of revival events. I was exposed to the Brownsville Church revival in Pensacola. I went to Converse College in Spartanburg, SC. During college, my church, Bethel Assembly of God, was involved in earnestly seeking the Lord and “going for it” in worship. Being there was like a built–in internship. I was given a lot of opportunities to lead and co–lead on the worship team. The pastor and his wife were very hungry for more of the Lord and were extremely open to what He was doing. It was great to be connected to a place like that at the right time. All my musical training was classical music and composition, yet here I was at a church with many hands–on opportunities to grow and lead worship in an atmosphere that was very revival–driven. There were extended times of worship, and ministry. It was a great environment for me to grow and learn. It wasn’t perfect, but it was really a God–given gift that I was grateful for.

My roommate, a Spirit–filled Christian, was very prophetic and I learned a lot about prayer from her. She would pray and see a picture from the Holy Spirit. I had not previously been exposed to that. I learned how to operate in the prophetic gifts and I grew to a new level in intercession and worship. I was hungry!

Kathi: You’ve been used so greatly and mightily in so many settings all around the world and we are privileged to have you at so many CHM events. How do you see worship and soaking music intersecting with healing?

Kelanie: Worship is more than just singing songs. When we are worshiping together corporately and our focus is set on Him, my job is to get people’s eyes and affections focused on Jesus. When we do it together, there is an expression called “corporate anointing” — the Holy Spirit comes to do whatever He plans for that gathering. The worship helps people enter into an atmosphere of encounter and faith where we are experiencing His presence together. This is the encounter that opens up a place for healing, among other things. In Psalm 22:3, scripture says “He is enthroned in the praises of His people.” I think about that so much when we are worshiping the Lord together. We have an encounter with the throne room and He is in the midst of us. It sets an atmosphere of faith in the room and in the individual. I am primarily leading groups of people, helping them connect with the presence of the Lord and usher in that presence in a corporate way.

Kathi: Last year at the Captivate women’s conference, the worship was recorded and became the recently released CD which is called The Joy of the Lord. Can you share with us the background of these anointed songs?

Kelanie: Praise is the Breakthrough is also on my CD You are the Radiance. I wrote it while I was living in North Carolina and going through a difficult season. I was getting some healing myself in my personal life. The Lord was so gracious to me, but I was experiencing burnout in ministry and in my heart. I hadn’t written a new song in a while. That can be scary for a songwriter. I experienced some tremendous breakthrough and healing and immediately creativity came back and the song of my heart became alive again. Praise is the Breakthrough was the first song I wrote coming out of that wilderness season. Praise in the Spirit is a very powerful weapon we can take up and exalt Jesus in any kind of situation we find ourselves. The words from Psalm 40 came alive in my life. “He heard me, He pulled me up out of the miry clay and He put a new song in my mouth.” That song is a real marker for me in a change from that dry season.

The melody from Joy of the Lord came to me and was rolling around in my spirit and I didn’t have any words to it for awhile. I would sing “lalalala” in its melody and there was so much joy on it — I knew it was releasing joy. Later, I sat down to intentionally write the words and the song came very quickly to me. Every so often I get a song that way — melody first, feeling and knowing that something particular is attached to it. And then I go from there. When we played it at Captivate, we ended up doing a lot of ministry with that song and “flowing” with it.

Kathi: What you call “flow,” when you start going off the sheet music, can you explain that?

Kelanie: I call it spontaneous worship, spontaneous flow, and more specifically, there are times when I would call it prophetic worship or prophetic flow. When we are in unchartered waters, unrehearsed and spontaneous, the Holy Spirit leads and something happens.

Kathi: When you are doing that, do you hear the words before they come? Or do you just open your mouth and they come? The reason I ask is because a lot of people ask us about this experience afterwards. They know and they see and understand and feel the presence of the Lord, but their response is “What was that?”

Kelanie laughs.

Kelanie: This is often the subject matter that I teach. Sometimes I know in advance what the words are that are coming next. Often the Lord gives me one word. I hear a scripture, sometimes I hear a phrase and I will sing that. I practice spontaneous melody all the time, so even though it is “off book,” it is a comfortable place for me to go. Making up a melody comes naturally to me. The words might be ones that come to my heart, the language of my heart to the Lord. They might be a declaration, a proclamation of something the Lord is giving me for the audience, into the atmosphere. I am singing and leading worship, but I am also watching in the Spirit, asking the Lord, What are you doing, what are you saying, what do you want to do? Is there something we are hitting against? Is there a wall? How do we break through?

Kathi: It is similar to prayer ministry. We are listening to the person we are praying for and to the Holy Spirit for direction at the same time.

Kelanie: If we are going into a spontaneous time of worship, the other musicians know to stay in the same place and keep the same chords going.

Kathi: That is similar to intercessors in a prayer appointment.

Kelanie: Yes. The musicians’ repetitive chords are like a musical bed over which I can play and sing something new. I use the illustration from the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. There is a scene where Harrison Ford has to cross over a canyon. There is a bridge, but it is invisible. In order to cross, you have to step out into nothingness and put the full weight of your body into the air. As soon as you take that first step, the first piece of the bridge materializes. Then you have to do it again for the next step. And again for the next step. The bridge then becomes visible one step at a time as you are stepping onto it. This is how I step into prophetic worship. It is a leap of faith. I rarely get a full download of a chorus ahead of time.

Kathi: That sounds similar to a prayer appointment. You only know the step right in front of you. It is a faith journey.

Kelanie: It is absolutely a faith journey. It will always require stepping out in faith with the little bit that you have and depending on the Lord to give you the next step. When the words start to flow, there is a momentum that happens in the Spirit.

The Spirit of the Living God I wrote driving up and down I–95 to and from Jacksonville and Charlotte. My initial motivation in writing this song was to write a song about Holy Spirit the person, welcoming His presence. I started working with the language of the Holy Spirit being a friend, a counselor, and a teacher. I wanted to have a conversation with Him — “I love the way You lead me, I love Your voice."

The song Seven Spirits of God flowed right out of the previous song to Holy Spirit. I got a download about the seven spirits of God, which I just started hearing and singing over my life. Ears to hear, eyes to see, new revelation being released over my future, over my present, spirit of wisdom and understanding — I’m praying His presence over my body, over my mind. It became a prayer that I sing and declare. The feedback I get from this song is that it is having a profound impact on people. When the worship team starts singing that song, it almost feels like we are getting on a rocket and going straight up to the throne room, in the counsel of the Lord. It is potent.

Kathi: It is transportation to the throne room. I’ve experienced that myself! After that is True Praise.

Kelanie: True Praise I co–wrote with Susie Yaraei, who was one of my mentors when I was a student at MorningStar. We got together in Moravian Falls, NC where she lives. Toward the end of our time together, she played a short voice memo of a spontaneous moment she sang in a conference. The chorus of True Praise was birthed out of that rough recording. Originally the words were “The heavens, they are moving. The angels, they are moving. Jesus, He is moving.” We changed it to “Heavens, they are moving, angels are rejoicing, Jesus, He is reigning in the midst of true praise.” The whole song was birthed out of a prophetic song Susie sang during a strong anointing. There is an acoustic version on Youtube.

Kathi: Nothing Can Separate Me — I love that song; it is such a familiar verse to so many of us.

Kelanie: This one, like Praise is the Breakthrough, is on the You are the Radiance CD. The verses were spontaneous. I sang them the first time at a conference at All Nations Church, where Mahesh and Bonnie Chavda are the pastors. I heard the melody and lyrics in my mind almost right before we started worship. “I enter in by the blood of the Lamb, I believe I am who He said I am. I am Your child, I am Your son, I am Your bride, Your beloved one.” Those are the words I heard. When I started writing an actual song out of it, I received the chorus and I knew there was something else, but I just didn’t have it yet. While I was in North Carolina in that season when creativity was coming back, that song came back in my spirit. I wrote the bridge section so quickly. It was so ready to be birthed. The bridge was inspired by Graham Cooke. I had been around him at CHM conferences and had been listening to a lot of his teachings. It has a bit of his language in it. “You know my past, my present. You love me right where I am. You see who I am becoming. You love me through this journey.” Once I received the bridge, I knew the song was complete.

Kathi: Is there anything else you want to put forward to the readers of this article? Anything about how worship and soaking music can affect their lives or contend for breakthrough?

Kelanie: Anointed worship plays such a key role in receiving healing as well as revelation. I believe it is important to saturate your soul and your mind with anointed worship. I love music that is rooted in the Word and the language of the Word of God and His promises. It is good to read it and also to sing it, pray it, say it, engage your whole self with it. Doing this aligns your heart, your thoughts, and helps promote a healthy physical environment. The things that come through your ear gates and your eye gates are so important. Music moves the soul and our emotions. God made it this way. It softens our hearts. That’s why music can make us cry or laugh. We have a musical spirit because God has a musical spirit, whether or not you can sing. Worshiping the Lord through music or listening to worship music is healthy in the physical realm. I believe that praise does actually change the atmosphere. When you need a breakthrough in your body for physical healing, listen to anointed music. If you need a change in your emotional world, be in the atmosphere of anointed music, whether at a conference or in your own home listening to a CD. It does make a difference, because you are putting yourself into the presence of God.

Kathi: Thank you Kelanie. We look forward to many more joint conferences with you ushering in the presence of the Lord with worship.

To learn more about Kelanie and her music, visit www.kelanie.com or www.youtube.com/kelaniegloecklermusic


Kathi Smith Kathi Smith is the Senior Editor of Healing Line and an active prayer minister and volunteer at CHM. Summer 2017 Issue