Christ's Light

Worship: Understanding the Beginning

Worship is meant to be undignified, unquenchable, undivided, unpredictable, undone, unveiled, unstoppable, unnoticed, unsatisfied, and unending. A deeper meaning than most people would like to agree or believe. Worship should come from the heart and be meant for God and God alone. We all have misconceptions as to what worship is, and how we should go about worship. Obviously I’m no expert and do not even come close to any of these ten aspects of worship, I’ve just come to offer a mere motivation to press deeper into worship because I’ve felt a need recently to express what worship truly is. I don’t have the time to express into full detail every minute aspect of these ten items either, but I will in my mere meek words attempt to articulate to a little degree, to some measure, my view on worship.

Just a little side note that I want to address then I’ll leave you to delve deeper into what has been said, have you ever noticed how cheap words are? With however many thousands of words there are it seems that there is never the proper word to describe the proper emotion. A lot of the time words come close but never satisfy. You want to know why that is? It is because we are disconnected from our Heavenly Father. Once the disconnection happened in Genesis 2, man has had a longing to fill the gap, which was once endlessly filled, of separation between God and man. If there were not a gaping whole between our relationship (thanks to sin) we would not need words to express our emotions because we would already be filled.

That is the calling of worship, which is to be filled. And it is more than that; it is of the connotation that Paul uses in the New Testament, which is that we are to be being filled. We are to be equally yoked with God, continuously. There should be no end to worship, and because of this we should not be satisfied until it happens. There should be the desire within us to pursue the intimacy of God with all that we have. Pursuing the intimacy of God and desiring a deep relationship with Him is the purest act of worship we have on this earth. Our intimacy breeds intercession and intercession breeds’ revival. It shows our commitment and our desire to be partnered with Him. This Love is worship, and there is no calculation that can come close to love. No mixture of anything but God can produce love. Our love on this earth is fake it is not real love. If it were real love, we would all be satisfied and be able to sustain ourselves without God, but because we cannot, our “love” is anything but that. Love fills, and because God is Love that is the only reason things work. And a true relationship with the Living God shouldn’t just fade away or wear out like an old pair of shoes. It is meant to be new every morning, just like the mercy and grace that it responds to.

I have felt recently a calling in my heart, and even more importantly I know this is on God’s heart as well, that there is a call to return to the First Love, this place of romance in worship. The secret place that can only be touched in your worship and prayer time with God is this place of romance. This is God’s invitation to all that are willing. Beloved, we need to not let our worries and our distractions get in the way. We can certainly have them and bring them in with us to worship, but we have to obey Psalm 27:4 and lay our depravity at His feet, and focus on His beauty and not take them out with us when we leave. Our relationship with God could have been based upon anything that God wanted it to be about. It could have been about anything in the world, have you ever thought about that? Guess what God chose to base our relationship on? Worship? Wrong. Prayer? Wrong. God chose to base our relationship on God, himself. The only thing that is perfect, matchless, and holy. God has such unicity and profundity that our love for him should never be quenched. Not with weak words, empty promises, broken dreams, concepts, ideologies, theologies, church, school, work, friends, enemies none of that.

Because of God’s unicity, our worship should be spontaneous. As worshippers of Jesus today, we need to be unpredictable. When we come before God there should always be an aspect of being fresh and unique, it shows that there is a sign of life. Of course, we are creatures of habit and we tend to respond to some aspect of conformity and regularity, which is not a bad thing. God often works through that, but elements of the familiar that are reassuring can also be destructive. Tradition alone can become lifeless, existing to please itself, and not God, which leaves no room for spontaneous love. When we meet together on say Wednesday nights or Sunday morning structure is good (having a general plan or idea of what songs are going to be played), it should never be allowed to strangle life or the Holy Spirit. We should not cut worship short just because we have got a few new visitors in the room, or because we don’t want to freak them out. We need to be real before the God who made us and before society. Beloved, I’m convinced that this generation and the generations before us are bored with religion and tradition. They are so bored with our schedules, and our routines that if we would just shake things up a bit and invite God into everything that we do, this life would be so much greater. We have more in this day and age than ever before, we have more churches, seminaries, conventions, worship sets, trips, getaways, events, lock-ins, retreats you name it we have it. And yes God is there, but I ask you to question this one thing, are we allowing God to do his full work or are we just allowing him to sit there because our love, attention, and worship are focused on other things? I mean really? Am I just babbling at the mouth and speaking meaningless things or am I getting somewhere with my point?

In no way did I write this to convict you. I wrote this to offend you. I love a faith that offends, I desire it, I long to be the greatest radical this world has ever known other than Jesus, to which I am not even comparable. I wrote this so that the next time you enter in to the presence of God you would begin to question yourself and actually get honest before the God that made you. I really desire that each and every one of you would take up the Spirit of whatever it takes for the God of the universe and worship him with all that you have. Embrace these ten qualities of true intimate worship the next time you press through and see how much God changes your time with Him. See how much God moves. There will be the divine element of a relationship with Jesus that is birthed out of the secret place and will begin to manifest itself in your daily life.

With that being said:

Lord again I come to you asking that you would come and meet us where we are. Unveil yourself Jesus. We need to meet with you. We need to chat and have a true relationship with you. God I ask that you would come. Would you release your angels of worship from heaven? Send worship angels from heaven that would come and transform our way of thinking about how worship should be. I’m pleading with you that as we embrace this idea of worship that it would be a true thing that is not faked because we want to look like we are meeting you. Father I understand that there are days where we just need to trudge and battle, seek and not find. And Lord because of those days would you make that one day in worship where you really meet us, be so much worth every second of every day that we traveled through muddy waters. I really ask and desire this in Jesus name. Lord don’t ever let us leave you alone until you bless us with your name like you did with Jacob. Father never let us become satisfied with you in our flesh so that it would hinder our ability to press and desire more of you. Let our worship never end for you are never ending. Let us become undignified like David for your glory to be revealed to every believer and unbeliever alike through worship. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.