A couple of weeks ago, as I was worshipping at home, I got a picture of a place with lights, loud music and people dancing. I wasn’t sure what I was looking at and was struck by the thought that it could have been a worship night or a nightclub and that from my glimpse I could not tell which it was. I ended up talking to God about what worship has become in our churches.
I have heard people saying things like “I didn’t get anything from worship,” or “I don’t like the worship in that church.” How have we made worship about our preferences and what we get from it? How has it become about us at all? I am not exempt from this malaise, much as I’d like to claim some kind of moral high ground.
I too have come with an attitude of “I need worship” because of how it will make me feel. I know that as we choose to set our eyes on Jesus our king and magnify him, it changes the atmosphere and diminishes the lies of the enemy that may have taken hold in our minds. I know that worship is a battle strategy that can be used against the enemy, just like Jehoshaphat in 2 Chronicles 20, sending singers out at the head of the army but that is different from using worship music like some kind of magic wand. Is my faith in the God the music is glorifying, or in the worship leader, or the music itself? Am I fixing my eyes on Jesus or wanting to feel good, or be entertained? It is a subtle thing I think but significant.
That is not to say that I do not believe in having worship music on to set an atmosphere in a room. But maybe we need to be more aware of what we are doing. Having worship music on in the background is not worshipping and we shouldn’t pretend it is, but absolutely have worship music in the background!
I went back to the story of Abraham in Genesis 22 which is the first time the word worship is mentioned in the bible. Several things occurred to me as I read Genesis 22. Firstly, worship in our current context is often used to mean music but, in this story, and indeed in the pattern of worship throughout scripture, it meant sacrifice. The word translated worship means to bow down. Like the elders in the throne room, in Revelation 4, a natural response to the glimpses we have of our glorious king, is to surrender, to bow down.
Let all his lovers who bow low before him sing, “His constant, tender love lasts forever!” (Psalm 118:4)
I was struck by how Abraham and Isaac carried the fire with them. I wonder how many of us come to church and expect the worship band to “stoke our fire” and get us ready to worship. I wonder if that is really their responsibility.
Abraham, willing to sacrifice his son in obedience, in worship; Mary in response to the great love Jesus showed her breaking her expensive alabaster jar of perfume and anointing him with her fragrant worship. These are biblical pictures of the cost of worship. When David is buying Araunah’s threshing floor to build an altar in 2 Samuel 24:24, he says:
“No, but I will surely buy it from you for a price; nor will I offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God with that which costs me nothing.”
I have found myself questioning my heart attitude in worship. Is it for me or God? Is it costing me anything or is it just singing, while in my head I am contemplating what I am cooking later? The picture of Abraham or Mary, or David dancing with passion, is a far cry from mindlessly singing songs where I am barely aware of the words. Sometimes the cost is I don’t feel like worshipping – I am in pain or struggling with life in some way and I am choosing to worship as an act of my will because God is always worthy, in that sacrifice of praise, I know it pleases him. He is encouraging us to push deeper in worship in this season.
It is, like so much of our walk with Christ, a heart thing. It is also not something I conjure up but there is an intentional choosing to focus my attention, to push past the distractions. Like everything else in my life, I need Holy Spirit’s help to worship. I need his grace. I need his inspiration, his leading. We are told in the John 4:23
Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks.
This thought about what kind of worshippers the Father seeks had me looking elsewhere in scripture. The story of Abraham seemed to naturally lead me to Romans 12:1 and the sense of sacrifice that still prevails in the New Testament, before we consign it to the old covenant. Like so much of the new covenant, it ups the ante ~ we don’t have to find a sacrifice to bring, we ARE the sacrifice.
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship.
The phrase “pleasing to God” jumped out. How many verses there are expressing God’s displeasure with what was being offered as worship! Jesus was especially hard on those who liked to look good on the outside:
Jesus replied, “You are hypocrites! How accurately did Isaiah prophesy about you phonies when he said: ‘These people honour me with their words while their hearts run far away from me! Their worship is nothing more than a charade! For they continue to insist that their man-made traditions are equal to the instructions of God.’ (Mark 7:6-7)
Singing a few repetitions of “Holy, holy, holy” just because that is what they are singing in the throne room doesn’t necessarily please God. It isn’t the words, although it matters that it is truth. It isn’t whether it sounds good, whether I look good to the person next to me, whether I am the most enthusiastic, abandoned worshipper. It’s not about getting carried away in the excitement of the moment. What matters is whether it pleases God.
In both the Old and the New Testament, the sacrifices are living. He doesn’t want our dead works. And there are strict instructions about bringing the best. It is easy to give to God out of our leftovers, out of our residue but the offerings were to be the first fruits, the first born, the best. That is what God gave us – his first born, actually his only, son. Nothing held back. I wonder how often I bring him second best, half-hearted worship, out of my “leftovers”. Those mornings for instance when I prioritise other things before him and he gets the leftover moments squeezed in before I have to go to work, instead of making the other things fit round him.
I am happy to surrender things that I don’t care about, that are effectively already dead to me. But my whole life is to be laid on the altar, including the things that are really alive to me, really precious to me. Not out of show, not because I want to look good. But in response to him. “In view of his mercy”, as a heart response to his love, his sacrifice. Otherwise, it is dead religion, duty. God has challenged me with a question in terms of my worship, whether on my own in the mornings, or corporately as church family:
Is your heart engaged with me?
True worship comes from a heart that is engaged with our beautiful Saviour. It needs to be worship in truth, in reality – not worship of a god of my own making, but the real I AM! Worship that pleases God is worship from a heart that is his, fully devoted. It comes back to the fact he wants our heart, all of it. He either does or he doesn’t have it, we can’t fake it with him! So, it is about truth, coming in the reality of where I am. Authenticity and vulnerability. No pretence, no religiosity.
For me, the decluttering of many things in this season has included a sorting out of worship that no longer seems to fit. I have found myself yearning for a different sound. “Sing a new song to the Lord” we are told in scripture but maybe the point is I am not waiting for someone else to produce “a song” but that it’s time to move into a new style of corporate worship where everyone brings their own true voice, under the inspiration of Holy Spirit, and we enter a new realm of worship that fits this season and pleases the Lord. Then maybe his fire will come and fall on our sacrifice.
free2follow 
Food for thought. Thank you for this.
You are very welcome!