I've recently been invited to share my thoughts on the heart of worship to a group of young people interested in leading others in worship through music. I decided the best way for me to pen my thoughts for them was to blog about it as this is the most comfortable way for me to communicate. I hope you enjoy.
Worship, at it's core, is quite simple and more common and widespread than Christianity. Worship is giving affection. It's giving honor. It's offering your admiration and allegiance. And it's done by a means and with an attitude that is honest and heartfelt. It is not coerced or offered out of guilt. And it is only able to be offered if the person offering the worship knows and has reason to give it to the subject that is receiving it.
This happens at concerts and sporting events. This happens at political rallies and book signings. However, as with all things God created, worship is expressed in its purest and most intense form when it is offered to the God whom we know and love. Matt Redman puts it this way, "Worship is always a response to revelation." Meaning, we must first have a revelation awakening to who God is in order to respond to His love in worship. God created the act of worship as an aspect of our interacting and communicating with God, and Him back to us. You see worship may happen anywhere, anytime for anyone. But it only fulfills it's perfect created intent when it is offered TO God FROM His created and beloved children, us.
This, I believe, is an important distinction to make today as the word "worship" has been degraded to a musical genre and a title attributed to 20 minutes of corporate singing. That being said, I will not go into the immense detailed list of ways we CAN worship God. That would take a long time and my list would undoubtedly be incomplete. What I would like to talk about is HOW the Bible instructs us to worship GOD. Then, we can apply these principles to worshipping God in every way that honors Him.
To begin, offering anything more than simple acknowledgement of appreciation for anyone other than the One and only true God, is idolatry. It's one thing to clap for a sports figure or applaud an excellent musical performance. It's another thing to esteem them in your heart as superhuman, infallible or divine. Notice I used the term, "in your heart." That's because only true worship can happen when it is birthed from the heart. The form it takes afterward is almost infinite in its options to be offered to God, but it must be expressed from the heart, or else it is not worship.
Why? Because the heart is the constant core of true emotion. This ideal crosses race, language and geography. This is not only true of Biblical interaction with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We say to a loved one, "I love you with all my heart." Mark Lowry once said, "we don't say I love you with both of my kidneys." No, we don't. Because the heart is the seed of all emotion and the source of life. The heart provides for all of the other functions in the body. No body part provides for the heart. The heart pumps and circulates the blood. It acts as the great regulator for all other organ functions. It is the one thing that must operate in order for us to continue living. Therefore, to express anything from our hearts is, in effect, to say we offer the core of our very existence to this subject through these thoughts, emotions, words or actions. In this way, we say to God, "I love you with all of my heart." And that is HOW we are instructed to worship God.
Now, to really drive this one home to those who say they want to lead worship. We must wrestle with, understand and grasp this principle of worship being an outflow of a revelational knowledge of God's love if we are to lead others in responding to that love. We must know, embrace and cling to this love. Paul instructed the church in Rome to "cling to what is good."(Romans 12:9) In conjunction, Jesus said, "why do you call me good, no one is good but One, that is, God."(Matthew 19:17) Now, if we connect the dots here and understand Paul and Jesus' choice of words, we will have a distinct insight into the revelational knowledge of God, which is, as we discussed, the principle basis for all true worship from man to God. Ready?
The word here 'cling' is the greek word kollao. It is a verb tense of the root word kolla. This use of the word in this case means to press, fasten or otherwise permanently attach with cement or glue. It means to grasp onto it as if it were the only thing keeping you alive. Why does this matter? Because we're looking at the whole council of God here. So, if Jesus says there is no one who is good except God and that essentially only He, God the Father deserves the title of "good", and Paul tells us as Christ followers to cling to what is good, then the application for us looks like this:
Fasten yourself, as with cement to be permanently pressed together and so tightly attached that we can't distinguish where one begins and the other ends with the only One who is good and that is God as if your life depends on it.
This, my friends, is HOW we respond to God's great love. Only in grasping onto and clinging to the Father in a way that we can not be separated do we align ourselves with the instructions of the Bible. And only in this way do we return the love of God the way He has loved us and given His life as a sacrifice and visible sign of His great love for us.
You see, worship is simple. It is expressing love back to God. But we must first know God's love and our heartfelt response to His love which results in actions in order to worship Him, and further, lead others into true worship in its purest, most perfect form on this side of eternity.
Thanks for reading. I love you all.
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