Worship

Lately, I have had several conversations regarding the topic of worship. So, I wanted to touch on what worship means to me and perhaps clarify it for those who seek to understand it.

As I sit here on a gross Sunday morning contemplating whether to wake my husband and get ready to visit a church we were invited to two weeks ago, I cannot help but think about what worship means to me.

Growing up, worship as a Pentecostal Christian meant chaotic services of dancing and loud music and shouting. The older I get, the more I wonder how much of that was for show rather than for God. I want to understand why it was so important to give such a performance. The older I got and the closer I became to God in my own personal time, I just found worship was much simpler than that.

There's a song called Heart of Worship that comes to mind. It starts out with:

When the music fades and all is stripped away and I simply come

Longing just to bring something that's of worth that will bless your heart

Over the years, I find myself praying these words. Like this simple song with very simple lyrics and even simpler music written to it, I find myself wanting to bring worth to the worship I present. I want more than shouting and sprinting around the church not truly understanding what is going on. I want more than loud music and chaos. I want more than even a song. 

When I was in high school, I attended a youth group in midtown Portsmouth, VA that was led by a youth pastor who was very much a worshipper. He taught us how to worship. When the music director was led away to a different church, he taught us that the music was not the worship. He taught us that it did not matter who stood on that stage and sang. Worship is not a performance for us to watch. Worship, particularly corporate worship, is an opportunity to participate. 

I truly believe that Pentecostal worshippers in the early days had this concept correct. It was always meant to be a freedom to worship as you felt led. Whether that meant dancing, shouting, singing, or running. But there's MORE to it than just these actions. If there is true freedom in corporate worship, then there is freedom to do more than just stand and clap your hands and wait for the songs to end while you shift your weight from one foot to the other watching the praise team perform. If there is true freedom in corporate worship, then there is freedom to draw visions, to wave banners, to write letters of love to the God who created you, to read the holy scripture and drink in the words from the God who loves his people. 

And to go beyond that, if there is true freedom in corporate worship, then it extends beyond even those in the audience, but also to the performers. Because if there is true freedom to worship, then the praise team is not actually performing. They are merely leading the worship and stirring the atmosphere and are examples for those who are still learning how to worship. With their freedom, they too can worship how they feel led. Whether that be singing, dancing, shouting, playing instruments, or laying prostrate. 

Revelation 4 draws a heavenly scene of worship. John describes creatures with six wings and twenty four elders who likewise worship day and night. Isaiah 6 describes the same scene thousands of years before John was ever born. The heavenly worship that is in throne room. The angels and the creatures created in God's image worshipping together. No one is saying to them to shout or to clap. No one is telling them what they must or to repeat words that a leader is shouting into a microphone. They are not even required to worship. The same scene. Drawn twice in the Bible in a vision. Thousands of years in between the two. And they are the same. 

David worshipped very much in a way that was not popular. His own wife chastised him for dancing before the Lord so hard that his clothes fell from his body. Imagine being so completely UNAWARE of your surroundings that you are so fully immersed into your worship to God that you open your eyes and have no clothes on. That was David. And David was described as a man after God's own heart. 

Isaiah 29:13 says, "The Lord says, 'These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules that they have been taught.'" 

I challenge you as you get ready to meet for corporate worship today. Be careful of where your heart is as you enter the throne room. Enter in as more than a spectator or even as a performer. Enter instead as a worshipper and worship in full freedom.