The wonder of worship! - How do you define worship?
 

During the last 25 years or so, Church worship has seen changes in probably all aspects – style, songs, musical instruments, technology, church buildings and more. In some churches, changes were so violent that regrettable phrases like ‘worship wars’ had to be coined. The guitar-driven band phased out the organ backed choir so much so that music and worship are spoken about as if they are one and the same thing.

 

But we know they’re not.

 

So what is worship anyways? How do we understand something so important that it’s described in great detail in the Bible and yet not specifically defined by it? Maybe that’s why worship is understood in different ways by different people/denominations:

 

One thing is certain though: Worship is for God alone – Deuteronomy 8:19, Isaiah 45:22

 

This also means who or what we worship is our God.

 

Worship is to acknowledge that something/someone is greater than me.

 

In short, worship is to say “you are God.”

 

Consider these quotes:

“Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His Beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose – and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin” - William Temple

 

The root of our original sin was in desiring to be like God (Genesis 3:5). Pride, which seeks to make god out of self can be fixed by worship, which is to humble the self and confess the real God is God.

 

Pride says ‘I am god’ whereas worship says ‘You are God’ and so become spiritual antonyms of each other. A proud worshipper or a proud worship leader should be an oxymoron in that sense. If we are proud, then what we are offering/leading cannot be worship.

 

If someone asked me to define worship in a single sentence, I’d say worship is to reckon someone/something as most important to me. If it’s not God, then I am in trouble. In Old Testament language, that would make me an adulterer/prostitute.

 

Worship is giving God an uncompromised paramount place in my life that everyone/everything else takes second place. As God Himself said in Isaiah 45:5, He alone is the Lord and there is absolutely no other. Worship is realizing this truth and gratefully expressing to God that He is our Creator, Father, Redeemer, Savior, Lord, King, Ruler, Protector, Defender, Shepherd…