A lot the information you'll find about worship, especially on the internet, deals with the what's and how's and when's and where's. These can be important to discuss and improve. First and foremost, I want to make sure I'm clear on the why's. Why do we worship? Why do we come together to worship rather than remaining by ourselves? Why do we do the things we do in the way that we do them? If I look at a particular practice and just try to evaluate whether it is good or bad or look for ways to improve, I might be going down a path that leads to nowhere. No matter how fast I get there, heading toward nowhere will still get me nowhere. Thus, I want to make sure the destination is well understood before making the journey. I need to understand the why's of what we do before and make sure those are correct and let that guide me in my journey to make the how's, what's, when's, and where's better.
A song that I've come to appreciate more in the last few years is "Heart of Worship" by Matt Redman. I really love the lyrics that focus our worship on God rather than on us and our preferences. Recently, I learned the story behind the song. You can read about it here or watch this video where Matt Redman discusses the story with his pastor.
A song that I've come to appreciate more in the last few years is "Heart of Worship" by Matt Redman. I really love the lyrics that focus our worship on God rather than on us and our preferences. Recently, I learned the story behind the song. You can read about it here or watch this video where Matt Redman discusses the story with his pastor.
Another song along the same lines is called "Clear the Stage" by Ross King. It asks what our idols are.
The primary purpose of worship is to honor God. Anything we do that gets in the way of that purpose needs to be stripped away whether it happens in our individual lives throughout the week or during the couple of hours we allocate for corporate worship on a Sunday. When worship becomes about me and my desires, I am setting myself up as an idol for myself or others. When I lead the congregation in worship, I constantly have to keep my pride in check. Everyone is looking at me, following me. If I am not pointed in the right direction, I am not leading them in the right direction, toward God. Paul said to emulate him as he emulates Christ; as a leader I should always be pointing to God in my worship so that those who follow me will also be pointed to God.
I haven't used a lot of scripture to back up any of my arguments for the simple fact that there are way too many to list. But just so that I'm not totally devoid of references, Psalm 95 does a better job than I of describing the purpose of worship.
Today, I've focused on the vertical aspect of worship. In the next post, I want to continue to discuss the why's but shift perspectives to examine the horizontal aspects of worship. So far I have 7 general topics planned but will change and add more as I go along.
- Community
- Connections
- Planning
- Flow
- Communion
- Styles
- Sunday Nights
Each of this topics will heavily biased by my experiences and understanding within the context of a traditional church of Christ worship service. That's not to say that I won't be challenging those traditions, but I'll leave that for later posts.
4 comments:
When worship becomes about me and my desires, I am setting myself up as an idol for myself or others.
Quite right. How many times have we heard, "I just didn't get that much out of worship today" or "Man, those songs just seemed to drag on and on" or something similar? This attitude of worship being about me isn't limited to "conservative" Christians or "liberal" Christians or any other label we want to use. I've seen it across the spectrum, and I've seen it in me. To me it's the biggest obstacle to worship that satan can use.
Like so many things in life, we get from worship in proportion to what we put in. Sometimes it is easy, sometimes it is hard. When I'm leading, I always make it a goal to to make it as easy as possible by removing distractions and creating an environment conducive to worship. But that doesn't always work and is not that same for everyone. That's a topic I'll be addressing in a future post.
Do modern Christians confuse assembly with worship? Romans 12:1 identifies worship as a continual action, not an event or activity performed only periodically, but rather a way of life, giving of oneself entirely at all times in the service of God. Thus, while singing in an assembly with the family of Christ is part of worship, so is driving to work, and posting messages on the Internet. Romans 12:1, backed up by Col 3:17, leaves no doubt that everything we do at all times is worship, and thus should be done in the service of and to the glory of God.
"Do modern Christians confuse assembly with worship?" I'm certain that we do though it's probably not exclusively modern. My next post is about community. We can't separate that 1 hour a week from the rest of our lives and expect it to be acceptable.
Everything I do is not worship. Because I am not perfect. But everything should be worship.
Thanks for your comments.
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