Across the room to Worship, Part 2

Something to chew on....

"Worship is the rationale of existence.  It is the ground from which love emerges unique and strong, with convictions and reverence.  Worship provides the posture of the heart and harnesses the inclination of the will.  We stand together as a community before God, but we also stand in communion first with the triune God who himself is a Being in relationship.  Only when holiness and worship meet can evil be conquered.  For that, only the Christian message has the answer."

Ravi Zacharias

Worship is "the response of who we are to who God is" says L.T. Jeyachandran.

We were created for worship....for communion with God. It is all about God!

The Bible says that God is WORTHY to receive honour, glory and praise. Worthy to be worshipped simply because of who He is. It also says that we should offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. To me that means that I should worship God with my life. Every day. That includes everything I do and say. If that is so, then it would seem that when we all get to our respective Sunday Worship Service we bring our worship, our lives, with us. All of it...the good, the bad and the ugly! Joys and sorrows, pain any other junk! All of it together, Sunday Morning Worship!

I think worship has everything to do with our concept of who God is. Is my God up in the heavens somewhere or is He an intimate personal God. Through a study I did some years ago on worship I came across a statement by Dr. E. Stanley Jones who said "The Church is filled with Christian idolaters, for idolatry consists not only in kneeling before visible objects and giving them obeisance but also of carrying in our hearts a picture of God which is unworthy of Him." I need to get a clear SCRIPTURAL understanding of who God is before I can worship Him in spirit and in truth. Many have recently read "The Shack" which portrays God like I've never seen it done before. We can't expect any book other than the Bible to reveal the truth about who God really is and what He is like.

It seems to me the first time worship is mentioned in the Bible is when Abraham was commanded to sacrifice his son Isaac. God had promised Abraham many descendants so before he went up the mountain with Isaac he said "WE will worship and then WE will come back to you." He didn't seem to have any problem obeying God because he trusted God. It reminds me of Job who also trusted God as he falls on the ground and worships even after losing almost everything he has. We can't very well worship God in spirit and in truth if we don't trust Him. If we trust Him we won't feel the need to pretend. We will come to Him as we are, with all our pain, frustrations and disappointments in life to worship Him. I think this should not only be accepted but encouraged in corporate worship. Many of the Psalms in the Bible are laments that were sung by the Israelites and we too can admit to God how we really feel Sunday morning in church. We need a place of worship where we can be real. We should be able to worship Him IN the difficulties of life.

One aspect of worship that I think is missing a lot of the time is that our ultimate goal as Christians is to spend eternity in heaven. When I was growing up a very large percentage of songs we sang and messages we heard were about heaven. I must have heard the pastor say a million times how wonderful heaven will be. I hardly ever hear anyone talk about how wonderful it will be to get to heaven. We seem to be so focused on muddling through this life we have no time to consider the next life. Sad since heaven is our ultimate destination and life on earth is very short. I think our worship has to include the anticipation of eternity with Jesus. It helps us to focus on what is important in life here on earth.

OK...that's all I can manage for tonight. Hope it makes sense. This is turning out to be a great exercise for me right now and I'm glad and a little timid about sharing it.

May God bless you as you worship Him with your life this week!

...across the room to expose myself....

...to get real, that is.  I'm thinking that if I put my thoughts down on this blog for anyone to read it might help me to sort out this topic and come to a place of rest.  The topic? Corporate Worship.  I have no trouble worshipping God on my own or with some close friends just in case you might read this and wonder if I EVER worship.  Oh YES!  I HAVE to worship my God.  He is my life.  He is my everything and I love Him with all my heart and soul and strength.  When you are really passionate about something you just have to share it and I feel that way about God.  I want to worship Him corporately with my brothers and sisters in Christ. That is where my dilemma begins.  This issue has plagued me for a number of years by now.  Those close to me know this full well.  I have been confused, angered, extremely frustrated to the point of tears (OFTEN!) and completely aghast at the type of worship I have been seeing in churches wherever I go.  For the most part I have not liked, or enjoyed, or been able to participate fully in a worship service in a very long time.  This journey has been wracked with pain and disappointment.  I know... it is a sad state of affairs but it's not over yet.

Throughout my life, whenever I have experienced real difficulties, I have made it a policy of sorts to go back to the basics, or the beginning.  I go back as far as I have to in order to find a starting point so I can deal with what I know for sure.  Sometimes I struggle for a long time before I remember to do this.  This time it took me a lot longer than usual to finally get there!

It seems to me that any time I have struggled through something, nothing happens until I get to the end of myself.  To get to that place where I finally decide that nothing matters to me more than a solution.  I am willing to give up whatever I need to and I'm willing to do whatever it takes to resolve the issue.  I don't know that I've arrived yet but I do think I am beginning to see a path.  Where it will lead, I'm not sure.  I believe it will be to a better spot than where I am now.

Often people don't like to hear anything beginning with "Well, when I was a kid...." but this is my blog and that IS where worship began for me.  Sunday mornings we would get dressed in our best clothes and go to "Sunday WORSHIP SERVICE".  Never did it enter my mind that only part of that service was for worshipping.  Worship included singing, praying, scripture reading which was often done by parishioners, bringing tithes and offerings, a sermon and quite often a sharing time where we were encouraged to share what was on our hearts.    Prayer time often involved several parishioners praying audibly.  Singing was led or directed by either the pastor or a song leader.  He made sure everyone was joining in and he made sure we were aware of the words we were singing.  Many times the singing was stopped long enough for him to either give some background information about the song or the writer, or to ask us to think about the words we were singing and I remember how that changed the way we sounded.  Suddenly there was LIFE in the music.

During my teenage years we moved and consequently attended a new local church.  These people would often meet thirty minutes prior to the worship service for a sing song.  They loved music and they loved singing together.  This did not keep them from singing more songs during the worship service.  The singing was hearty and there was lots of it.  This I know for sure:  I absolutely loved Sunday Morning Worship Service!

I checked my online dictionary for the meaning of worship.  Some of what I found included...THE REVERENT LOVE AND DEVOTION ACCORDED A DEITY..., THE CEREMONIES, PRAYERS, OR OTHER RELIGIOUS FORMS BY WHICH THIS LOVE IS EXPRESSED; ARDENT DEVOTION, ADORATION, etc.

Obviously worship is all about God...

Keep checking back....this is only the beginning.