My friend Dawn recently wrote a couple of posts about worship. Then she wrote yesterday that she’s feeling vulnerable because of some posts she made on the Mosaic Nashville forum.
I understand her feelings of vulnerability. You put ideas out there and words with no faces sometimes stomp all over them. I quit reading that forum many months ago. But Dawn’s post caused me to go back over there and see what’s going on.
Discussion is abounding over what worship is, exactly. And, as a side discussion, what leadership is and if we all are leaders or not. I thought Dawn made some very good points about worship and presented her thoughts very well. And she has good questions. Things like, are we being relevant to the culture around us in the way we structure and conduct our services? and Is worship more than just singing songs and listening to sermons? I’ll get to the leadership stuff in a moment, but first… what is worship?
It seems to me that worship has as many definitions/meanings as there are people. And it seems that no one really knows for sure what it is, exactly.
I’m no expert on the subject either. I’ve often wondered myself what it is we mean when we talk of worship. I apply the word to many things/activities, even non-activities. To the point that I muddy the waters more with my attempts to clarify.
Is worship the thing I do when I’m all alone in my home, listening to my favorite worship music and just being with God? Is it the thing I do when I’m at church, singing songs and lifting my hands in praise in a crowd of thousands? Is it the thing I do when I’m moving faders up and down, tweaking the E.Q. and making sure the sound is balanced and well-mixed? Is it the thing I do when I’m laying mic cords and putting up mic stands and mics, then wrapping it all up and putting them away? Is it the thing I do when I’m alone reading my Bible and asking God about the meanings and applications of the passage? Is it the thing I do when laughing with a co-worker, talking earnestly with another, crying with another? Or when I call a friend just to say "hi and I love you"? Or calling my sister to cry on her shoulder or comfort her heart over something? Is it the thing I do when I’m working and really digging into a project and gettin’ it done? Is it the thing I do when I’m driving to work and see the beauty around me? Or see a beautiful sunset on the way home? Or see Jupiter or Venus shining brightly in the evening sky?
As I asked God about about this yesterday, He brought to my mind Romans 12:1:
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.
Okay, I get it that. Sort of… what is it to "offer my body as a living sacrifice"? I mean, what does that mean, really? Again, it’s a churchy phrase long over-used and short on really context in my culture. So, I flipped over to the Message translation of the same passage and found new insight:
Take your everyday, ordinary life–your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life–and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.
Now, that makes more sense to me. If I’m reading this right then the answer to all my above questions is, "yes". — So like God to answer in the affirmative to "all the above" when I’m convinced the question is an either/or question.
If I’m reading this right, then my worship is all of those things. Its everything I do, everything I say, everything I think, and everything I am. No ifs, no whens, no buts (if/when I do this, than its worship, but only if my heart is right… blah, blah, blah). Sounds crazy, doesn’t it. Maybe it is. Maybe I’m completely off my rocker (wouldn’t be the first time). But I think we humans too often put qualifiers on things where God doesn’t.
I know. Paul says "make all these things things an offering to God. This is your worship." But what if what Paul is really saying here is, "these things are your spiritual act of worship, make them an offering to God"?
Perhaps worship is a state of being, not a verb or a noun. Its the state of being the offering, whatever we do and say and think and are is the worship we offer, the worship we bring to Him.
Whoa, would that change the way I live my life and who I see myself as! There are some things I don’t want to offer to God as worship; things I do that aren’t right, things I think that aren’t pure, things I say that aren’t God-honoring, things that I am that I think aren’t good enough.
And yet, God made me to bring glory to Him…. Let me back up and just say, God made me. God. Made. Me.
Yep. Now I know I’ve got some of you worried. 😉
God made me. And He loves me. Just the way I am. I was made by Him to bring the exquisite fragrance of God to the world every moment of every day. But some days my worship smells more like poop than parfum. Yet even then, my offering of poop is my worship to God.
Okay, that’s nasty. I don’t want that to be true…
I once heard it said that we worship what we obey. I think that’s probably true. If I obey my own lusts, then I’m showing the world I worship them. If I obey my selfish desires and ambitions, then I show the world I worship me. BUT If I obey God’s commands and the passions He’s put in me, then I show the world I worship God.
What I’m getting at here is this: Perhaps we have misread this and other passages about worship to mean that worship is something we specifically do, rather than all that we do, say and are. Regardless of our focus on God, everything we do and are is our worship of, and to, God. The act of making ourselves the offering, of offering all we do, say and are to God, enriches and purifies our worship, so that it is holy and undefiled in God’s eyes (and acceptable to Him, like Abel’s offering — Gen 4:3-5). But even when we don’t make ourselves an offering to God, everything we do, say and are is still our worship to God. It’s just defiled and, well, poopy.
I don’t know if this is a true rendering of that passage. I don’t know for certain what worship is at all. I know what I call worship. And I know its not always the same as what others think. So I could use some help here. What do you think?
Joe, what do you say, you seminary-educated giant? 🙂 How ’bout you, Los? Thoughts from the Worship Leader? Wendy, anything?
As I read your paragraph that listed the various things you do, I thought “All of the above.” If you allow God to enter your life fully, then everything you do will be a glow of life, of worship, visible to the world around you. You won’t be able to stop it.
I was at Mosaic the other day. Debbie and Nate bribed me with breakfast at Dinah’s. The band was loud and muddy and I was longing for your worshipful, experienced fingers on the faders. Worship makes a difference, and it takes a lifetime to learn.
I think something really has happened to you, Lu. This is quite a post. I’m glad to see your spirit flying with God. Let the others play with the rhetoric. You do the actions.
Living sacrifice… we have a living God. He takes no delight in burnt offerings and dead bulls. Instead he gives us life, gives me life daily. The sacrifice? Perhaps it’s as simple as setting my ideas aside in the realization that following Jesus really is the most life-oriented, the most life-full, the most anti-death thing that I can do.
It is a sacrifice. Fear keeps me away. God is a virus whose infection I tend to fight because He’s strange. Life is strange. I’m more used to death and death’s ways. The smoke of dead things surrounds me. Life really is a saacrifice, requiring a change in the way I think and the way I look at things. To hold God’s hand and keep going is a constant setting aside of what I think is right.
It’s odd that such a life-giving way would seem such a great sacrifice. Maybe this is sort of the beginning, and the sacrifice will change through time. Paul said there are depths of depravity in me… but I can only do what I can do at the time. Leave tomorrow’s sacrifice for tomorrow. Today is all I can handle.
Thanks for reading my posts and putting up your own response here. I agree with you. I think that people are continuing to put more emphasis on style or format instead of on what worship really is. I loved the idea of worship as a state of being. I think if we are truly new creations in Christ then we would be in a different state of being and that state would always be worshiping God.
Have a great Thanksgiving. We will be out of town, but let’s get together soon for lunch or dinner. I’d love to talk with you and hear how your life has been lately. Love ya, Lu!
I posted on this a while back. Basically I came back with “worship is a response to God: to who He is, to what He’s done, to what He will do, for you, for me, for everybody.” And when you take it as a response, that opens up the opportunity to use every ability He’s given us to respond to Him. Think of the implications of that.
Pretty vast, eh?
http://theram4jc.blogspot.com/2005/10/art-of-worship-intro-part.html
That’s the link. I never pursued the rest of the series because, quite frankly, it’s as simple as what I said. There was no need, really.