Worship 101

It’s who you are and the way you live that count before God.
Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth.
That’s the kind of people the Father is out looking for:
Those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship.
God is sheer being itself – Spirit.
Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration.

~ John 4: 23-24 (Message)

Not too long ago, Michael Bynum asked those who attend the Wednesday service the following question: “Why are you here?” That night I heard many really good answers. Mine was to worship.

If all I really wanted to do was to fellowship and to hear some good music, I could go almost anywhere. However, I need God. I need to find Him, and I need to be with people who need Him and want to find Him. I believe that this is the heart of our corporate worship here at Vineyard Gadsden.

Most of us understand that we’re all broken in some way. All of us are messed up in places. That’s okay. God loves me (and you) as I am. He’s given the word and His Spirit to bring me closer to Him, and as I get closer to Him, I understand that I am broken in places that I didn’t even know were broken. Finding Him heals those broken places and changes me, and as a result, I am becoming more like Jesus.

I believe that God has gathered a people here in this fellowship who simply want to be themselves before Him, who are willing to cry out, “Lord, I want to open myself up before you. Do what you will.” This becomes a scary proposition because it’s not comfortable.

Living like this changes the way we think. Things that we once thought were true now aren’t. The things we were raised to believe were truth no longer seem to be true because over time we all pick up little signs and baggage that attach themselves to us and mix up our understanding until we come to the place where all that is left is us and God, where the only thing we want in life is to be with God. That is what I think worship is.

John Wimber once said that the most significant lesson that his wife Carol and the early Vineyard worship leaders and the fellowship learned was that worship was the act of freely giving love to God.

John Wesley is one of my heroes. He said that all of life is sacred. In other words, all that we do is worship before the Lord.

I want to get to the place where - not just at Vineyard Gadsden where I come to gather with people who are hungry to find God, who meet to hear the word and express themselves in musical worship because that’s the way we do things – I want to get to the place where I want my life to be a love song for God in places where we aren’t as a group – at work, at places where I find other people and friends. I want to be worshipping in those places so that they can smell God. This is what life is about.

Here are some other types of worship:

General, Generic, All-purpose Worship - A voluntary act of adoration, awe, service, or reverence directed toward an object or being.

According to this definition, we direct our attention and focus and the special part of ourselves that expresses appreciation toward something. This is the definition that is accepted by the body of Christ at large.

We can apply this definition to several activities – participating in singing songs and hymns; attending services, programs, and studies or classes; observing special days and events, decorum, and attendance; personal study and practice of the disciplines of the faith such as Bible study, scripture memorization, prayer in group settings and privately.

This description of worship in a general, generic sense is that we have voluntarily acted in such a way as to show that our preference is to live for God. We have voluntarily submitted ourselves to God’s direction in our lives.

Please hear my heart and not just my words. Whether it’s under the Lordship of Christ or not or the direction of the Holy Spirit, we’ve given ourselves to something. Many of us – and I’ve lived a lot of my life like this - many of us by sheer determination, will, habit, or whatever will get up on Sunday morning and go to church because that’s what people do, and we call this an act of worship. That may be the reason there isn’t a lot of power in worship, in the church at large.

Too many Sundays in churches all over the world at 11:00 A.M., we gather for worship. We go in and stand up at the right time because someone says, “Please stand and sing...” We sing the songs and listen to the special music. We expect the pastor to tickle our fancy. We stand for the prayer at the end, which may be the only prayer we pray all day. We shake people’s hands as we leave and say, “My, what a good sermon.” And, we call this worship because this is all we’ve known. This was what we were taught. We’re there because we’re supposed to be there.

Please hear me. I’m not talking about everyone. I find great comfort in knowing many people who are genuinely expressing worship in these moments because the expression of their faith fits into that particular mold. They are comfortable with these traditional rituals. This is the way their heart and spirit and mind engages with God. It’s how they are wired. Still, through these rituals, they are able to find God.

Fleshly Worship - Worship directed toward an unworthy object.

Here are some examples of unworthy objects: Kids, Spouses, Jobs, Members of Family of Origin, and Social Position. These should not be objects of worship. The first of the Ten Commandments says, “I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. I am God, no other!” We are to worship only God. He alone is worthy of our worship.

So many times we fail in this area. Please understand that worshipping something other than God is a dangerous and deadly thing. I’m convinced that in my own life in times when I’ve had some other god on the throne other than the true God, even though I might come here with the hand of God on my life and be moved to worship Him, I was never able to get to the level He wanted to bring me to because I had something else on the throne.

Often, I have felt conviction and sadness during worship but didn’t really understand why because I had something else on the throne that week. Perhaps it was my self-image that comes from my family of origin, and I was trying to live up to something. Maybe I had a spouse or a child or something else sitting on God’s throne that didn’t belong there. What always happens when we worship an unworthy object is that we end up being ruled by the very object we are worshipping. That’s just the way it works.

If we worship our children, they’ll be in charge which is a reversal of the proper order. God has set in place an order for the things in our lives, and He should be at the top of the list. If we ever get the order out of whack, then our lives don’t operate right.

We may pay our tithes every week and come and cry and worship God the best we know how and never find the contentment in life that we’re seeking simply because we haven’t put first things first. Anytime we worship anything other than the living God, we’re in trouble. It doesn’t matter how great and how wonderful the people He’s placed in our lives are. Whenever we get to a place where we worship something other than God, it will be to our detriment and will bring nothing but harm to us. Ultimately, it will bring nothing but harm to the thing that is being worshipped.

For example, I know people who have really good intentions. They want to raise their children and give them things they didn’t have as a child. We’ve all heard people say that. Well, don’t do it. Give them the things the Lord tells you to give them, and the first thing needs to be a worshipping parent, a parent who knows God, a parent who’s following God and sees through all of the crap that comes along in life and says, ”Lord, if I can find fifteen minutes with you today, everything will be all right.” Even if we can find only five minutes on some days just to be alone with Him, then everything is going to be all right.

Well then, what is true worship? True worship is a voluntary act of awe, adoration, service, or reverence directed solely toward God. It is an individual’s natural response and expression to their understanding of God from the intellect as well as the body.

Jesus said that we have to worship in spirit and truth. We have to get to know Him at the place where He exists as best we can. To do that requires that all of me responds to Him. When He touches my life, I respond because I understand that it is Him moving. My intellect responds to Him because I know that God moves in different ways. He either places His finger on a place of correction or stirs my heart to worship or brings joy and contentment.

I understand these things from my intellect, but my body also responds. Each of our bodies will respond naturally according to our level of understanding of God. For instance, some people are quiet when they worship. Sometimes, I will rock back and forth and pull back inside myself, i.e. be contemplative, because I am thinking heavy and deep thoughts. Sometimes, I will bow and get my head close to the floor maybe even lying on the floor. In either case, I am responding with both my body and my mind.

I believe that in our fellowship many would bear witness to this. When we worship and God genuinely comes and we feel His presence and He responds to our effort however poor it may be and He is true to His word and inhabits the praise of His people, our bodies will respond. Some of us quake, some of us cry, some of us kneel, some of us lift our hands, some of us dance, some of us shout, some of us sing loudly, and some of us sit quietly. We all respond in different ways.

I believe that true worship happens in a place where people are free to earnestly and honestly respond to God as He moves their hearts. It’s hard to be transparent before God because in everyday life, the expectations of those around us often inhibit what we do. Sometimes, we bring this into church life.

My hope for this fellowship is that we will come to a place where we simply respond to God. Period! Oh, that we would gather with hungry hearts and give our offering to Him and that when He sits down in our midst, we would respond honestly to Him. This is true worship. In this place, we understand that there is no other God, that there is nothing else worthy to be worshipped, that there is no sense of what someone else expects of us but simply what our God has moved us to do. In this place, the Spirit can orchestrate our varied responses into a single act of praise and offering to the glory of God.

Worship Etiquette

So many of us have stuff inside of us that we don’t know is there. We have ways that we respond in a worship setting and other settings that are programmed. I believe that we need to do away with those things because I believe that there is an etiquette, or manners, for worship and for body life that encourages us to focus on God while we are in a corporate setting, an etiquette that takes our attention away from self and from the people in front and the people speaking and that places our attention solely on God.

In a worship setting, any activity that draws our focus away from God is out of order. Our actions and expressions ought to be directed toward God and never toward man. Take clapping for instance.

Sometimes there is an exuberance in worship and people begin to clap. This clapping is an honest expression of worship. One of the things that’s been programmed into me (as a worship leader I may be more aware of it) is that when a song is finished, I want to clap. I don’t think we’re supposed to simply clap our hands as a sign of our appreciation for a worship leader or a speaker. To me that’s out of order.

If we’re clapping because we enjoyed the song or something that is said, I pray that we’ll hold our applause. I don’t want anyone to clap for me. You don’t know me as well as I know me. Nobody needs to be clapping for me or for anyone else. I would much rather someone show his appreciation after the service. Honestly, I do appreciate words of encouragement when people say that what I have done has helped them worship. Those words encourage me to be better prepared the next time I lead worship. They help me realize how important what I do is.

However, if we clap and raise our hands because we can’t stand it and we’re worshipping God, then may we clap until our hands are red. He alone deserves our praise.

Another manner considers how noisy what we do is. John Wesley said, “Don’t let your bawling drown out the singing of others.” He encouraged people to sing well enough so that those who hear may enjoy. He wasn’t telling folks who have a bad voice to not sing; he was simply encouraging us to not be a distraction to others. This includes singing and all types of physical expressions. If our worship is really exuberant, please move so that we don’t slap someone sitting next to us in the face. You don’t know how many times I’ve raised my hands and hit someone in the back of the head.

When we worship, we’re all here for the same purpose. Anything that draws attention to ourselves and interrupts the worship of others is something we need to rethink. Please hear me. I’m as guilty as the next person. In our fellowship we’ve been given the freedom to move around as needed. Let’s do so.

Another manner concerns idle conversation. Audible, continuous idle conversation, whether it’s happening on the front row or back row or in the middle of the room or in the bookstore, sometimes prevents people from worshipping. Yes, we should worship God in a natural, honest manner. But yes, we should also prefer others out of love for Christ. I’m not talking about the noises associated with children. I’m talking to the adults.

If someone needs to have a conversation, just step outside. When finished, come back in. That may be exactly what God wants. That conversation may be just the encouragement that someone needs, but please don’t distract others from worshipping in the process.

When I come here, I come to worship. Sometimes the things of the day weigh heavily on my mind, and it takes several songs before I can truly worship. Some days I get there easily. Some days I never get there. But, I won’t give up.

May we all seek to honestly expose all of ourselves to Him and become transparent and find that place where we can tell Him exactly what we feel about Him and hear exactly how He feels about us, that place where it’s just the two of us regardless of the number of people in the room. I believe that is what it means to worship.

~ Bruce Cornutt

Mary,
Oh, what an example
of extravagant love –
exquisite jar,
expensive perfume,
broken,
emptied over the feet of Love.
“And the house
was filled
with the fragrance.”

Could have been sold,
given to the poor,
but somehow she knew
what His closest did not.
Kneeling,
she seized the opportunity.
“And the house
was filled
with the fragrance.”

Private moment
in such a public place,
tears mingled with oil.
Hair in humble hands
washing holy feet,
world fading away
as private drama unfolds.
“And the house
was filled
with the fragrance.”

Two kinds of lovers in this old world:
those who hold back nothing,
give their all,
and those who are too afraid,
too self-conscious
to give anything at all.
May we choose to be like Mary,
and our house
will be filled
with His fragrance.

~dhandy

Whatever stops us from worshipping God, whether we realize it or not, has become an idol because it has become more important to us than He is.

~ Judith Christie-McAllister