Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Worship, take 2

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The next installment in my rambling doctrine of worship. Again, not the full breadth of everything I believe, but a snippet of it. Also, I don't claim to have it all figured out.

2. Worship should seek to glorify God - not us.

Worship that glorifies us sounds like this:

  • The worship was ok today, but I wasn't really into that one song.

  • What was up with that guitar today, it was way too much.

  • The message was good, but the pastor's shirt wasn't really workin for him.

  • The style of the music just wasn't what I like, I wish they did more _______ [your prefered style].


    • Worship that seeks to glorify God gets past all the trappings of our human nature. Instead of centering on what the worship does for us, we think about what we offer to God. When the main concern of services/gatherings of worship is "what did I get out of it?" or "what did I like about it?" we become the focus of our worship. The point of the service is to please ME.

    Worship that seeks to glorify God, seeks to please Him. His pleasure is the primary focus of the worshiper. The point of the worship experience isn't for me to get fed/hyped/filled/pleased. The point of the worship experience is for God to receive a sacrifice that pleases Him. What pleases God?

  • humility - see Psalm 51:17

  • love - see Luke 10:27

  • justice - see Amos 5:21-24

  • caring for the least of these - see Matthew 25:44-46


    • Some practical steps toward seeking to glorify God in your worship:
  • spend time in prayer before entering any worship experience...ask God to set the eyes of your heart only on Him

  • don't sing the words to every song in corporate worship...read/reflect/pray through what you're actually saying to/about God

  • frequently worship God in styles of music/liturgy that you're not familiar with...the less one-dimensional we are, the better

    • Posted by clayton at 10:38 PM

    1 comment:

    Margo said...

    The style of the music just wasn't what I like, I wish they did more calypso/polka music. I think part of the problem comes from our buddy Jesus mentality. G-d is no longer a great omniscient mystery, because somewhere in the past couple of hundred years we have squished Him into a human shaped box. And the logic follows that if G-d is just like me (english-speaking, american, white, middle-class), why wouldn't He want what I want/have to give in worship. Instead I think we should be given a big slice of humble pie and be groveling in adoration every Sunday that the G-d of the universe hasn't wiped our sorry asses out of existence yet because we suck big time. And we do suck, compared to the plumb line of Jesus. Or not. Whatever.

    10:25 AM

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