Tag: church

Worship? – pt.2

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Worship.  It is a word that separates many people.  For most people it defines a style of music that is heard in church.  And the style you prefer causes you to join together with people who agree with you, and separates you from those who disagree.  We have fights over contemporary music vs hymns.  We argue over instruments and how many people should be in the band.  And all the while no one stops to wonder “is this worship?”

We focus on the music, and how it makes us feel and we forget that worship has nothing at all to do with us at all.  God is calling us back to the true nature of worship again, and if we get it right we won’t worry at all about what type of music is playing.  We are called to “worship in spirit and in truth” John 4:24  And worship that God seeks starts not with the music we sing, but with the heart we sing it with.  Worship begins in the heart of the worshipper.  The problem with our focus is that it remains on us.  We look for songs and music that make us feel good and fit our personality.  If we like fast tempos and a hard beat we love contemorary rock.  If we like quiet we prefer thoughtful contemplative music. 

But the fact remains that we are the focus of our worship.  We cover our selfish nature by making the subject about God, but we sing and dance for ourselves.  For most of us worship remains about what we want and has little to do with what God wants.  We “honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me” Matthew 15:8  If all we have is the music we have missed completely the point of worship.

Worship is about giving awe, respect and value to someone.  It starts with an attitude and a heart posture of submission.  We cannot worship someone we feel superior to.  As soon as we figure we know better than God about something we remove ourselves from a place of worship to lordship.  As soon as what God wants for us becomes a suggestion we remove our ability to worship Him; because worship by it’s very nature means we bring ourselves under and submit to someone.  If we don’t return to making Jesus our Lord, and bringing our whole life under His control we will never be able to worship Him at all.  Worship must begin with surrender and exalt God for who He is which means He is God and we are not.

Worship?

worshipFor most of us when we think of worship we think of gathering ourselves together within the confines of a building somewhere to pray and talk about God.  For many, many Christians in North America at least this has come to describe the first part of a service where we sing together.  Having been a worship leader for almost two decades it has for several of those years been my definition as well.

Worship has been a source of great contention and fighting in churches throughout history.  Charles Spurgeon even called the worship team “the war department” because worship has always been a subject which causes people to argue.  How many songs do we sing.  What kind of songs can we sing.  Are there musical instruments allowed?

I have begun to realize over the years that we have completely missed the boat in regards to worship.  Because worship was never meant to be about us.  Music isn’t even needed for worship to happen.  I have left many services over the years, ones that I have led, and others where I have been a participant, and have often heard people say “wasn’t worship powerful?”, and the opposite “worship didn’t do anything today.”.  I have had people say they didn’t like the music I chose.  I have had people refuse to take part except when songs they like to sing were played.  I have been involved in discussions where people demanded that chorus be used instead of hymns.

I think we have walked away from true worship and have begun to worship worship.  We value the songs, the lyrics, or the rhythms that we like and discard everything else.  We take part when we feel like it, depending on how spiritual , or how difficult or easy our week has been.  I have struggled to take part myself when I was feeling low or tired.  But worship was never meant to be about us.

When we allow our preferences and passions to determine our worship we focus on ourselves and what we want.  And worship was meant to be all about Jesus, letting our love and hunger for Him express itself.  Worship is about proclaiming God’s value and glory.  It is about focusing on and valuing God simply for who He is.

Worship is about our lives placed before our creator and exalting the one who made us, and redeemed us.  Wolfgang Simson wrote “worship has much more to do with Spirit-filled obedience (Romans 12:1-2) than with music and singing “worship” songs. Our worship must center on the unquestioning readiness to lay aside life, limb, possessions, family, house, friendships, evangelical respectability—everything—to see the knowledge of the glory of the Lord covering the earth as the waters cover the sea.  Worship is not so much what we do but how we do it; not so much what we say or sing but how we are a living sacrifice.”

We have allowed ourselves to walk away from the passion and power of lives lived in surrender and allowing our lives, hearts and voices to give expression to the greatness and awesome splendor of the King of kings who spoke the entire world into being, and knows every star by name, and still has time to know how many hairs are on our heads.  We serve an incredible and awesome God and we need to return again to the true roots of worship, and become the worshipers God is seeking after.  “Indeed, the time is coming, and it is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. The Father is looking for people like that to worship him.“ John 4:23 GWT

The Missing Church – part 1

Much of what we consider to be church today is actually a waste of time.  We go through our religious routines and do our spiritual duties once a week and continue on with our lives as though nothing has happened.  God, it seems, has no room in our lives except to an hour or two on a Sunday.  Or maybe we have a small “quiet time” and pray our list and read a couple chapters in our bibles and consider our duty to God has been fulfilled.  And yet this is not what Christianity was to be about.

Christianity, according to scripture is supposed to make a difference in our lives.  1 Peter 2:9 “tell others of the night-and-day difference he made for you—from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted”  If Christianity hasn’t made a major difference in your life that others can see, then we need to re-evaluate our faith.   People look at us who call ourselves Christians and see no difference between their lives and ours.  Statistically we have the same habits, spend our time in the same pursuits, watch the same movies and television.  In fact statistically the only difference we have as Christians from those outside our faith is that our divorce rate is much higher.  And we wonder why people don’t want what we have.  I don’t wonder.  There are some days where I look at what the church has become that I don’t want it either.  We are a long way from what God designed and planned us to be.

God’s plan for the church is for us to not be a natural church, but for us to be a supernatural church.   We were meant to have the power of God flowing in and through us on a daily basis.  If you visit different churchs from various denominations around North America, you would find little differences, other than maybe styles of music and teaching.  And it wouldn’t matter what faith you visited.  And yet Christianity is supposed to know God’s presence and it is very lacking in our services and lives.  But if we were to visit many churches in many third world and developing nations, you would experience God in them.  God’s presence if so real it is almost tangible for them.   Daily miracles and healings are documented, and not documented by the churches, but by medical science and those outside the church.  People are seeing who have never seen before.  People are hearing and walking and talking.  People are even being raised from the dead.  And the church in North America which calls itself by the same God is barren and quiet.  God seems to be absent.  Why is this so?  I think there are 3 reasons

  • We don’t understand the Christian Cause
  • We don’t understand what Christianity Costs
  • We don’t understand how Christianity is Communicated

We don’t understand the Christian Cause;

            Christianity is not about going to church.  Nor is it about confirmation and communion or all the other rituals we attribute to our faith.   So if Christianity is non of the things we attribute it to, what is it really?  Lets start at the beginning.

Christianity is about our need for a Saviour.  We have missed out on the plan that God had for us.  The bible states that we have missed the standard that God requires of us.  God’s standard to be in heaven is absolute moral perfection. “Be holy even as I am holy” the bible says, and “Without holiness noone can see God”.   We all know what it is to tell a lie, or to steal.  We say but these are such minor issues.  I have never murdered anyone, or commited adultery.  But these are areas where we have fallen short of God’s standard.  And if we look at scripture we have all murdered and commited adultery.  The bible says that if we have hated someone it is the same in God’s eyes as commiting murder, and if we have lusted after someone we are not married to we have commited adultery, so we have fallen short and missed the mark that is God’s standard.  And the cost of missing the mark is that we are and remain separated from God, and as a result of that separation are condemned to an eternity in hell.   “But” you would say “if God is so loving how can He send me to hell?”  But the cause of us being in hell isn’t God’s fault, it is ours.  Asking how God can send me to hell is the same as shooting someone and then asking the judge how he can send you to jail, and in some places death row.  Hell is a result of our actions not God’s.  Then you state that you have been a good person and have helped the poor and done so many good things so then you should be able to go to heaven.  Unfortunately, compared to God’s holiness, our attempts at good deeds are about as nice as a bin of old oily rags.  They simply don’t measure up.  Nothing we can do can cause us to measure up to God’s standard.

So what can we do?  Well scriptures say that God loved us so much that He sent His Son to pay our penalty and allow us access to Him once again.  Because of Jesus the separation between God and us can be broken.  Jesus came into the world not to condemn the world but so that through Him the world could be saved.  He came to save us from eternity in hell and offer us eternal life.

Christianity is about eternal life.  But what is eternal life?   Christianity is not about living forever.  Every person concieved lives forever, which is why abortion is such a horrible thing to God.  So if eternal life is not living forever what is it?  The bible states what eternal life is.  John 17:3 states “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”  The word KNOW in the greek literally means to be intimate with.  Eternal life is simply and deep and intimate relationship with God.  Nothing more and nothing less.  This is why Christianity is so life changing.  When you get close to God you cannot help but change.  We have made Christianity so complicated and so full of rules and regulations and we have totally missed what it is about.  Simply a relationship with The One who created you and loves you so deeply that He sacrificed Himself to pay your penalty so that your could come to know Him deeply and intimately and enjoy each others company for eternity.  If we can come to God on those terms we can have that relationship with Him.  It is about asking Him to forgive us for missing the mark and allowing Him to change us and bring us into relationship with Him.

In my next posts I will continue my thoughts and share about what Christianity Costs and Communicating our faith.