Pervasive Worship

Let me be candid.  It’s a daunting and humbling task for me to write on the subject of worship.  Even though I have spent the majority of my life “leading worship” and the last several years trying to define what that really means, I am still hard-pressed  to compact it into the neat little box of a definition.  One of the most difficult hurdles in writing on the matter is this: everyone has their own opinions on what worship is and those opinions drive the way they follow Christ.

This is dangerous ground, people.  And it’s very telling of the nature of worship.  It’s pervasive and extends into the far reaches of our thoughts and actions.  Harold Best writes that we are unceasingly worshiping.  God created us in a way that we are constantly ascribing worth to everything we know.   Those things we place a value on above our own, we worship.  And I can see this played out in my own life.  Where does my money go?  Where does my time go?  Maybe I’m not chasing the latest fashion trends or taking on a second job to afford a new car that I don’t need, but am I more consumed with self preservation than the cause of Christ?  Most of the time, unfortunately.

So, I’m just going to forego the necessity of explaining that worship extends beyond the songs we sing on Sunday morning.  Just to keep it brief, worship is the goal, music CAN BE the vehicle.  It isn’t the exclusive expression of worship, but it is one way to honor God.  So how then do we have such a difficult time with music in our churches?  Obviously no matter if you’re given a Lexus or a Pinto to drive, you’ll make it to your destination.  So then I would say the fuss is about the car we’re driving (not literally. Stay with the analogy).

What’s happening is that we are chasing our fulfilled desires and calling it worship.  We want to feel a certain way in a service.  We want to dress a certain way.  We want to hear a certain style of music or preaching.  But what is the true worship of God?  I would say that it is the total yielding of one’s self to Christ because of who God is.  Anything less is idolatry.  Believing that worship is inherent to a specific time and place and in a certain context falls way, way short of the worship of God.  In fact, it’s the worship of our own desires and perceived needs.  When we have been called to sacrifice our lives [Rom. 12.1], constraints like that don’t matter anymore.

The catalyst needs to be our love of God.  That will drive us towards obedience, which is the essence of worship.  Jesus makes this clear in Matthew 22.37-40.  He says “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind…”, because obedience begins with understanding who God is and putting your faith in Him.  But how can we trust him if we don’t know him?  The good news is that God has revealed himself to us through his Word [John 1.14-18].  We have an opportunity to know God, and through it be transformed into creatures who earnestly seek His will[Rom.12.2].  This is the beginning of the true worship of God.

Start with the Psalms.  Daily.  There is an endless depth of the character of God found in Israel’s hymnbook.

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Sources/ Suggested Readings :

Harold Best, Unceasing Worship. John Frame, Worship in Spirit and Truth.

Hence the title of this blog

I think it’s ironic that idle and idol are homonyms.  Idleness is generally the cause of idolatry, for Christians least.  When we stop thinking and doing, we become idle.  It’s exactly at that point when we pick our idols and begin to worship gods other than the One, True and Living.  Usually this god is ourselves; our flesh that we are desperately trying to satisfy.  And what’s truly sad is that this idolatry causes us to be progressively less and less effective in our own faith (Ps. 115.2-8).   For Christians who live in the freedom of New Covenant worship, we sometimes act exactly like the Assyrians who did not even have the spirit upon them, as we do.

They worshiped the LORD, but they also served their own gods in accordance with the customs of the nations from which they had been brought. (2 Kings 17.33)

And so, we engage in the same kind of ritualistic worship.  Although I do believe God intended the corporate act of worship to engage our visceral senses, the rituals of worship without true sacrificial worship is worthless ( Ross, Recalling the Hope of Glory).  It’s just the motions.  Idolatry robs us of the ability to genuinely worship God, no matter how deeply you believe going to a worship service and raising your hands and singing loudly is real worship.  If you are going home and serving yourself, you are not worshiping God.  The bible defines Christocentric worship as being ‘living sacrifices’ (Romans 12.1).  So if we have the ritual, but not the actual worship, our acts of worship are worthless. (Remember Cain and Abel?)  The songs and all the trappings of a worship service are but rags, anyhow.  I could go on, but I digress.

I believe, through what I’ve seen and read, that this serving of the self leads to a possibly more catastrophic end for us Christians.  It leads to reinterpretation of the scripture from our personal experience (i.e. justifying our choices and actions based on the way we feel about something). This postmodernism is a plague, but it’s enticing because it allows us to have our cake and eat it, too.  We can make God fit into our custom mold that lets us get away with ungodliness, believing that we are not to judge others, but ultimately I believe that we are saying “don’t judge me for the way I live.”  I think 1 Corinthians 5 has plenty to say about those in the church who live by the flesh without remorse.  Read it.  You’ll see.  And I’m not saying that people don’t fall.  I’m saying there is a biblical standard for the way we are to live, and you can’t work the flesh into the equation, no matter how hard you try.  I actually have so many thoughts on this, I’m going to have to split it up over time.

The bottom line is, we are to discipline ourselves (1 Tim.  4.7).  This means we can’t just sit around and think about the way we feel, because then there would be no absolute truth, and Jesus made it very clear that he is the Truth and the way is very narrow; probably more narrow than we’d like to believe these days.  If we aren’t busy disciplining ourselves, we are idle.  When we are idle, we are left with the desires of the flesh.  When we are consumed with the flesh instead of a renewed mind, we are left to idolatry.  You can’t be an idolater and get worship right.  You just can’t.

Hence the title of the blog.