As I have already shared, God is opening my eyes to what worship looks like throughout my week. It has excited and challenged me, and I am still learning, but I love what he is already doing.
A couple weeks ago, as I wrestled with worship and it's meaning in my life, I decided to ask God an honest question.
Why do we worship? If worship is meant to be about the posture of my heart on an everyday basis, then what's the purpose of Sunday morning worship?
It wasn't long before I felt like he spoke something to me.
"If you're not worshiping me on a Sunday morning, it's fairly safe to say you're not worshiping me throughout your week."
Yikes.
Outward worship, the kind we demonstrate at church, isn't just some old tradition that we like to keep around. It's not based on whether or not we feel like participating because the worship leader is or isn't really "bringing it" that day. It's a visible reflection of the posture of our inward hearts!
God was saying to me that if my desire is truly to bring him glory all the time, that needs be manifested in the way I worship him on Sunday mornings. Simple as that.
So why don't I always feel like worshiping? According to A.W. Tozer in his book Knowledge of the Holy, "The Church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshiping men." And he believes this happens because "It is impossible to keep our moral practices sound and our inward attitudes right while our idea of God is erroneous or inadequate."
If we think we have God figured out we're not going to worship him. We can't put ourselves in a place where we can look down on God and monitor his worthiness on a given day and still be worshiping the infinite and holy God of the Bible! Instead, what we're worshiping is an idol created in our own image. And that, to me, is a terrifying thought, because that's exactly the position that Satan wants me in.
It is widely believed that Satan, before he was the fallen angel, was heaven's "worship leader." Within Ezekiel 28 is found A Prophecy Against the King of Tyre, a figure many scholars see as portraying Lucifer. Here is what some of it says.
"You were the model of perfection,
full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
You were in Eden, the garden of God;
every precious stone was your covering...
The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes
was prepared for you on the day you were created."
I once heard an interesting sermon on this subject. The pastor said that while Lucifer's voice and instruments were prepared for him by God, in the end his perfection was marred when in his pride he began using these gifts to take the worship away from God.
And Satan is guilty of the same fault today - shifting our focus away from God and convincing us to worship anything but Him. Satan loves it when we create in our minds a god who may even be like God, but is a god of our own making nonetheless.
Yet in the same way, he knows that there is something powerful about using our voices, bodies, and instruments to bring glory to the King of Kings. It says something about the determination of our hearts. We may mess it up, but as we come to him as "true worshipers," worshiping him "in spirit and in truth," (John 4:23-34) God works in our hearts to align and transform and purify us.
It's our choice. Walk away unmoved by a worship service or choose to see Him as worthy of our everything, regardless of the way we feel.
So my challenge to you is the same challenge I have given myself. On Sunday mornings, and any other time you come across a chance to worship God outwardly, come to him in awe of who he is. Engage with him because it's your privilege as his child, not your duty as a participant. He loves it when we choose to plug in.
"Sing joyfully to the Lord, you righteous;
it is fitting for the upright to praise him.
Praise the Lord with the harp;
make music to him on the ten-stringed lyre.
Sing to him a new song;
play skillfully, and shout for joy."
~Psalm 33:1-3
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