I’ve been plagued by a question.
“What is Worship?”
I could get real detailed, quote a lot of scripture, but I’m not interested in a soap box today. I’d rather hear YOUR thoughts!
What is worship to YOU? Is it possible to worship WITHOUT music?
Kevin Farmer recently preached about “judging others.” Do we pass judgment on others who worship differently?
I want to know what you think!
What is “reasonable and acceptable worship” to God?
YES, you can worship without music, but you can’t translate all forms of worship to congregational forms of worship. Music is a scripturally mandated form of worship. (If you don’t want to sing in church anymore, which I don’t think the pastor is saying he wants to do, I hear Ulrich Zwingli is running low on followers.)
YES, we do judge other people who worship differently, praise and worship types by buying into sentimentalism and secular notions of progress and “traditional” types by the belief that older is necessarily better, a belief expressed with intransigent, nostalgic glances to the past (which, by the way, was plagued by many of the same errors in worship we see today).
I think the pastor’s post comes from a frustration about how to worship. Pride and confusion are the greatest obstacles to proper worship. No one likes to be wrong, but we need to realize that there is a right way to worship God, we must practice it, and we must gently rebuke and teach fellow Christians when they hold contrary beliefs.
Worship is the praise of God. I think the whole worth-ship etymology could have come from the Psalms, which tend to follow a formula including declaring praise for God and explaining why we are praising him. This explanation of God’s deeds is often lacking in the modern church, perhaps because we (and I very much must include myself in this) are not always swift to see God’s hand or will. I think this attitude may have developed because of the embarrassments of certain groups or people trying to see God’s will expressed in too many ways (“God is sending this thunderstorm because someone here has committed a sin” or the “God permitted the World Trade Center to be blown up because Americans have become too permissive about homosexuality” of more recent infamy) and because of the Darwinian commitment to denying, often scathingly, the possibility of design in the universe.
Nevertheless, God has done mighty deeds for us, even if the only one we can think of is the atonement on Calvary. (Creation, faithfulness, and preservation are other examples likely to come to mind.) If we merely sing (or write or preach or create oil paintings that explain) that God is “mighty, awesome, wonderful, / mighty, awesome, wonderful, / mighty, awesome, wonderful” we can lose our reasons and sensible devotion in emotionalizing over how my buddy Jesus loves me. Worship is not emotionalism; as one of my professors insightfully says, emotion is good when it is prompted by an encounter with profound truth. This truth can be a compelling poem on the redeeming act, an article about child sex slaves, or news that a relative has died (though in these cases emotion is not necessarily in the context of worship).
Worship is exalting God for the things he has done. It is something you do, not something you feel. I’m hesitant to say that worship is a way of life; the implications of that statement are so vast, the meaning is so vague, and my own knowledge of theology is so slight. You can glorify God by painting an image, it seems, but there are many activities that glorify God that we would not primarily associate with worship, such as obedience to parents and evangelism. Paul does write that offering one’s body as a living sacrifice is our spiritual act of worship. As long as a painting proclaims the glory of God and tells why he is worthy to receive glory, I think we can call it a form of worship.
While I’m still not sure how many forms worship may take, words are the most important. Christianity is a very verbal religion: Christ is the Word made flesh. Worship services are opportunities to proclaim the glory of God and tell of his mighty deeds (in other words, worship is not about what we “get out of it” but about the beauty and power of God). We exalt God and we instruct others. Worship rightly includes music, but the glorification of God takes other forms as well.
I agree with what Philip says, but I also believe that worship that is truly in “spirit and in truth” will unleash the inner music of one’s soul to the greater glory of God.
Isn’t it interesting that the Spirit intercedes for us with groans more powerful than human language and also that Romans 1 suggests that in some way we know what we’re doing wrong? It’s true that we need to give God our best and keep trying to work out what God wants of us. We’re not God, so we can’t produce anything that equals him (nor should we want to), and we’re fallen, which makes things even harder. The problem is seeking self-gratification instead of trying to obey God with our worship. A lot of people who have bought into contemporary Christian music talk about how worship needs to be “genuine” and how one needs to mean what one sings, but they really are equating emotion with worship, fun with their music, and dourness/sombernes/boringness with Christian music that does not come from their new CD ($14.99, available from the band’s website). It’s a sly marketing trick, but it’s a means to seek personal gain that obstructs real worship. God will have grace on the well-meaning, and he is bringing us to obedience. We must praise God in the best way we can discern, and he will interpret our meager praise through his love.
I think this is a very good topic. Let me speak about worship in the form of music like we seem to be doing. We must keep in mind that at one time, the hymns that were sung by the people of the OT were contemporary, and the hymns that we find in our hymnals were contemporary, and now we have people bashing what is now contemporary music because it is done with electric guitars and drum sets.
Realize that if you have a perspective of what God has done for you and that every breath you breathe is a miracle, you have reason to worship. You have reason to proclaim how good God is, you have reason to do what Pslamn 47:1 says “to clap your hands with joy”, you have reason to make a “joyful noise to the Lord”. I have to disagree with Phill when he speaks of emotion not being a part of worship. If you worship dully and it is not from the heart then you are essentially praising God because you feel you have to. What good is that? What joy does God get from people who refrain to think about the words that sing to him. Singing is a form of prayer. What good is prayer if your emotions are not in it? It’s just words.
Whether you sing hymns, listen to orchestras, listen to punk-rock screaming bands, rap, dance, or rock out…if you do not do it because you are passionate about God, your worship means nothing. Some people find it hard to worship to modern music, so they go towards better ways they can worship effectively for God’s glory. Some people do the same because hymns aren’t their thing.
After all is said and done…it doesn’t matter how you worship, as long as you really do mean it from your heart. God doesn’t care if you tell Him He is worthy, and you love Him, and thank Him if you don’t mean it.
A.W Tozer once wrote, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us…worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God. For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like.”
I often read this passage of Scripture before i am about to lead people in a time of worship, reminding me of the God that i worship and what He is doing as i sing to Him. I read Revelations 4:2-11. I would encourage a lot of you to do the same. It changed my perspective of worship. Maybe it could yours as well. But please, realize that when you worship in song it is a prayer…and what you say to your Father means a lot. Don;t be a shallow worshipper, that doesn’t mean that you have to go dancing around and clapping your hands or crying your eyes out in every song. But, it does mean that worship in song SHOULD come from your heart.
Soli Deo Gloria