Ten Insights About Worship (1-5)

Well, I am thankfully back with some God-Given Insights.  When I took the position of lead musician of the Wake Forest Gospel Choir in May, 2006...I spent the next summer praying deeply about what I gotten myself into.  As the summer wore on, God never directly revealed what I would encounter in my new position of leadership, but He affirmed things that I had learned that hard way.   It was a season of flashes of journaling and logging what I have learned and what I had gathered from studying and spending time with God.   What came out of this is ten insights about worship and the life of a worshiper.

1. Worship is NOT a song: Worship in the church has been reduced to a song or singing or playing an instrument, but biblically that is not the case.  Although the musical craft is a major part of the corporate and the private moments of worship, it is not the width, depth, or breadth of worship.  God wants our lives to be worship, "I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. (Rom 12:1 ESV)"
2. Worship is NOT a service: I grew up believing that my worship was really comprised what happened in church.  But, really the corporate worship experience is the beneficiary of what I offer in my life outside the church.  The depth of my experience corporately is connected to what I offer God when only he is watching.
3. Worship is NOT a style, tempo, or display of musical skill:  I think this is one of the biggest misnomers in the Church.  Worship music is slower and Praise music is faster.  WRONG, music that has been produce with the heart to worship, magnify, edify, glorify God is all worshipful.  The music that I choose to worship God with I chose taking it account musical style and tempo and the excellence of craft; but if the heart of worship is not in it, the music is nice noise.  As a worship leader, excellence of my offering is my goal, but I have to place my heart and my focus on God and what HE has done.
4. Worship is NOT a moment: Tied to worship is not a service, worship needs to be boundless and perceived as outside of time and flowing in and through my life.  Why? because it was begun in eternity.   The Angels (Seraphims and Cherubims) are around the throne of God as we speak worshiping in heaven (Isaiah 6; The Book of Revelations), which is timeless and boundless.  Our lives can be shaped and fed by boundless worship that is not constrained to a time limit.
5. Worship is egalitarian: Worship is egalitarian, meaning it is demanded of all God's creation.  Praise and worship is what we were designed for.  With the very image and life of God inside of us, we seek out something to worship.  Theologians have called a God-sized void.  I believe that, and that's why worship is egalitarian.  We are all seeking God, regardless of our races, creeds, color, economic position.  God expects HIS sons and daughters to worship him and to honor him and to love him.

Peace for now...I will finish the list tomorrow.  God bless.

Ernest

Why I Worship

I have been thinking about why I have kinda left this blog undone.  There are two main reasons: 1) Lack of motivation; 2) Lack of direction.  Those two reasons will kill anything that one sets out to do.  Anyway, I have been praying about this and contemplating/reminding myself why I started this thing in the first place.  I wanted to impart some knowledge and insights about worship to younger brothers and sisters in Christ.

So to start this thing back up I wanted to talk about three reasons why I worship.

1. I worship God because He has revealed part of Himself to us.  It would be impossible to worship anything without an experience with it.  Follow the course of human history and man has been directed in worship of something because it experienced something that it could not understand.  Zeus, Ra, Isis, Osiris (gods/goddesses of lightning, sun, moon, death respectively; also all were crafted with human characteristics) all are experienced by man and so is Jehovah God (cf. Romans 1:18-21). 
2. I worship because God loves me and loves me in a way that I cannot even love myself.  His love for me transcends space and time and my own personal depravity.  I look at the world and see the horror of man and yet see the greater grace of God.  The Heavenly Father watches over His children and offers us invitations to sit at His table and to be free to love on Him.  Once I can receive his love worship comes naturally.  
3. I worship God because I have access to Him through Christ.  God gave His law to the Children of Israel, but they hoarded it and did not live it.  His law was to grant them prosperity and fullness of life but because of our inability to keep it.  God sent Jesus to fulfill the expectation of the law which was death.  Through His life, Christ kept the law and with his death and spilled blood he fulfilled the law.  I have freedom to worship and to chase after Him.

Till next time,

Ernest

All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

(Mat 11:27 ESV)

Motive-Centric Worship

I have a Top-Ten-type list on the way...but as I was attracted to something that was said in an earlier entry.   I mentioned a concept that I have not fully developed and it is what I called "Motive-centric Worship."


John 4:24--was a scripture used as a description of what our worship should look like...but never was fully explained.  Jesus says to the woman at the well that, "God is a Spirit and those that worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."  But, here's an insight, Jesus is responding to the woman's question about worship being tied to location and Jesus gives a law of His Kingdom that worship will no longer be location-centric as under the law, but motive-centric.  God is looking at our motives in worship and our willingness to make our worship completely about Him.


When I was a younger Christian (not an age-related thing) I found myself drawn to many stories in the bible and the exchange with the woman at the well and Jesus has always fascinated me.  My fascination is not rooted in Jesus proving himself as a prophet or even the woman getting it but it is rooted in verses 19-24.  The conversation takes a divine right-hand turn from Jesus digging in the woman's past to worship.  I wonder if the woman sensed something more in the presence of Jesus that compelled her to talk about the mount of worship of her fathers (vs. 20).   Jesus gives a quick prophetic lesson on salvation in response.  Basically making it clear that there is an hour that her location for worship will be trumped by the motivation and the heart of her worship.  Paul in Ephesians talks about the covenant the God had with the Jews that allowed them to be considered the chosen, but the Jews used that to become elitist and exclusionary.   It is in the grafting in of the Gentiles through Christ (Ephesians 2:8; 14; 3:6) that granted us access beyond the temple.

In the Old Testament, under the Old Covenant the tabernacle (tent of worship) was the contact point of the presence of God demonstrated through the Ark of the Covenant.  In the New Covenant the point of contact to the presence of God is The Holy Spirit (Acts 2).  In the presence of the Holy Spirit honest and true motives are integral and important (don't get it twisted that motives were not important under the old covenant...check the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4).  This is particularly evident in the story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5.  Our motives matter more to God than our expression in our worship (widow's mite, Ananias and Sapphira).  God is looking for his Church to check its motives when we worship...shed our religiousity and our pompousity and judgmental natures.  The motives of God's people matter and our breakthrough and deliverance is connected to them.  No longer is our worship tied to a location but to the omnicient, omnipresent and omnipotent God that has done radical things to save and transform us.

God Bless until Next Time (Happy 2010!!),
Ernest