mayfield church of christ

Rethinking Worship

Posted by Pastor Mark on 2 November 2008 | 1 Comments

Tags: Worship

Twelve months ago, I started using Close Up Blue toothpaste, and from the first time I used it, I loved it. I loved the clear blue gel with the little silver flecks in it. I loved the fresh taste, I loved the clear plastic tube it came in, in fact everything about my toothpaste made the whole experience of cleaning my teeth enjoyable - a wonderful experience that I looked forward to.

Three months ago, both Woolworths and Coles decided to STOP carrying Close Up Blue on their shelves, and I went into withdrawals. I tried other flavours  with cute tubes and nice colours, but NOTHING came close.

So this week, I wrote to the manufacturers in Victoria and I explained to them my dilemma and I asked if they could tell me where I could buy some Blue, and they wrote back and said that I can BUY Close Up Blue at their outlet store in Sheparton ......so I ordered a few boxes and my toothpaste will arrive in 3 to 5 working days.

Now the reason I'm telling you this, is that I've been a little embarrassed this week at how passionate I got about my toothpaste, and the JOY I experienced when I found that I can STILL get some sent to me.

And the reason I was embarrassed, was because it occurred to me that I can get SO passionate, and engaged in the process of tracking down toothpaste, and so filled with AWE about a dental hygiene product. And yet that passion seemed totally out of proportion to so many aspects of my life and in particular my relationship with God, and it started me thinking about how UNPASSIONATE our spiritual life can become, how MUNDANE, how go through the motions our times with God can be when we LOSE our focus. And the area that I find this MOST evident for ME, is in my worship.

Over the last few weeks, I've been looking down from the stage during worship, and it's always interesting to observe the many and varied responses to worship, and levels of involvement in worship. And I'm not suggesting that any of them are wrong, or that I'm concerned about worship in our church, but it's made me start thinking about worship. Because WORSHIP is one of those areas that CAN get a little out of proportion, a little LOST in amongst everything else.

So this morning, I want to wander through some thoughts I've been pondering on WORSHIP. Not because I think our worship is broken, but I want to see if there is anything that we might be missing, anything new to be added to the mix, any rethinking that might be worthwhile.

See for more than 35 years now, I have been actively involved in the process of corporate worship, and by corporate worship I don't mean worshiping corporations, I mean the act of coming together as a group of people to worship God.....to focus attention on Him.

And most of those 35 years have been up on stage in some form or another, behind the drums, singing, leading or allowing worship leaders to lead me in the process of worship.

And I can honestly say that through all that time I still LOVE the dynamic that happens when as a group of Gods people we get together to worship. And I think God does, too.....most of the time.

And I'd even go so far as to say, that some of my greatest GOD moments have taken place during corporate worship, when the presence of the Spirit of God has been SO there. And there's a sense in which you can feel God manifesting Himself in that moment, making His presence felt. And usually, those times happen when EVERYONE has come together with the common purpose of seeking Him and worshiping Him. And THAT'S what I love about worship.....but it's NOT always like that, and perhaps it's unrealistic to think it SHOULD be like that very often, but then maybe it SHOULD.

So I thought a good place to begin would be to pull apart a little our reading from Acts 2, which describes the characteristics of the FIRST church. Cause this stuff is all FRESH to them, it hasn't yet been twisted and distorted and cannibalized by religion and the church, it's the purest VISION of worship that we have so it SHOULD be our starting point.

 So I want to focus on HOW they worshiped and straight away there are some significant words that jump out at you from those verses......devotion......awe....gladness.....praise......

And you know for ME, I think perhaps the most significant aspect is their devotion. These people were DEVOTED, and by that I mean they had "steadfast perseverance" This was their first priority, and NOTHING was going to take their attention away from their focus, and their focus was on the apostles teaching, and their care for one another. This wasn't just a small period of time in the week for them, it was a LIFESTYLE, it was what their lives were all about, they were DEVOTED to making it work.

But it's the word AWE that gets me. Most of you know I enjoy the Message Bible. Well Eugene Paterson also wrote a couple of other books, and in one of them he gives this amazing quote about the awesome potential of worship, and perhaps a little insight  into how we are undervaluing it, and it goes like this.....

"Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?... Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? ...It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to the pews. Explorers unmindful of 'conditions' have died. Why don't similarly unprepared worshippers perish on the spot?... Week after week, we witness the same miracle: that God, for reasons unfathomable, refrains from blowing our dancing bear act to smithereens. Week after week, Christ washes the disciples' dirty feet, handles their very toes, and repeats, 'It is all right, believe it or not, to be people.'"

Perhaps that might be a bit harsh to describe our worship as a dancing bear act, BUT I understand where he's coming from. There is a sense of REALITY in describing a lot of worshippers as cheerful brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the absolute. Because to some extent our worship has become an ABSOLUTE a fixed.....this is all there is....this is how it's meant to be, process.

When I was little I got an ant farm for my birthday, and I spent half a day picking the nest and strongest ants from the garden to inhabit my farm. I looked after them I fed them I gave them water, which I soon realized was a mistake, after I drowned half the colony. BUT I soon lost interest in my ants, because it was like I meant NOTHING to them. They didn't stop what they were doing when I got up real close to the glass, they didn't even seem to get excited when I was right there watching everything they did. I MADE their little world. I sustained them with food, and yet it was as if they didn't even CARE that I existed. They just went about DOING the same thing....so I tipped them back in the garden.....I was disgusted with my ants.

If I was God, looking up close at some of the attention being paid to Him by his creation, some of the offerings of thanks, and the level of recognition of His significance in their lives, I probably wouldn't be real impressed. I guess it's just fortunate that Jesus has that attitude of 'It is all right, believe it or not, to be people'.

But it makes you think doesn't it and as much as I love the creative expressions of love for Jesus that are so much a part of our worship. I just have this sense that loving God and expressing that love, goes a whole lot deeper than just telling God we love Him, or singing to Him about it.

Because as you look back through the Bible, there's NO aspect of worship that involves those who are worshiping just giving God lip-service, and SAYING or SINGING the right words. In fact.....on more than one occasion God goes off at His people for going through the motions of these religious aspects of worship without LIVING out their faith in the BIGGER matters, like social justice and appropriate living. And that's what makes me wonder if we're missing something.

Because a deep, true passion for Jesus is going to motivate us to do more than just sing lovely songs to Him as our act of worship..

So I guess we have to ask - What is it that shows, that demonstrates our love for God beyond just the elements that we've come to see as our corporate worship - singing songs praying and taking communion together?

But I think to answer that, you have to ask another question: How did God show His love for us?

1 Jn. 4:9-11 : This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  

How did God show His love for us? He laid down His life for us, and our expression of love to Him is expected to contain at least a WIFF of that same commitment, that same passion, doesn't it?

See what  I'm beginning to FINALLY understand, is that if ALL of our life can be worship to God, then I don't want to limit my worship to the acts of worship that I am part of here on Sunday.

I think I am longing for something deeper. I think I AM a bit dissatisfied in my worship to God and I think that's GOOD. I think we should ALL have a sense of dissatisfaction in our worship, cause I think that dissatisfaction causes us to seek out to look for MORE than we currently do. More ways that we can express how we feel about our God.

See I want to worship God in the broader arena of life in  the ways I can find to lay down my life for Him - like loving the people He loves - walking the walk he wants me to walk - practicing simple obedience, and I say simple cause I KNOW I'll never be fully obedient. But that's what I love about my God - He is gracious.

But mostly, I want to worship Him by nurturing the character of Jesus in my own heart and life.

Have you ever thought about how TRUE worship happens? Because as I've been thinking about this whole notion of WORSHIP,  it struck me that in virtually every religion on the planet in which a ‘god' of some sort is worshiped, the worship that is offered is usually done as an attempt to ease god's wrath, butter god up in order to gain some sort of favor or as some sort of bartering,  in the hope that that god will act in a certain way.

And as I thought about that, it was a bit sobering to think of how much of THAT sort of behaviour has crept into OUR notions of Worship in subtle ways.

But in TRUE worship of our God, we don't worship Him to gain His favor or calm down his anger, or to get Him to do something. What SHOULD be happening is that we worship Him as a NATURAL response to what He has already done. Worship has got very little to do with what's to come, it's about what has already been done.

And this is how true worship should happen - It is not a conjuring up or working up of emotion to some sort of frenzied climax like it's sometimes portrayed. It is an overflow...... An overflow of gratitude when we REALIZE what He has done for us, the incredible price He paid to buy us back  and the incredible way He continues to touch our lives.

It's an overflow of AWE  when we consider His glory and His beauty, and the beauty of His plan.  It's an overflow of WONDER and ADORATION when we recognize how indescribably amazing He is.  Because when we begin to get a glimpse of who He is and what He's done, it's actually difficult NOT to worship.

But you know what concerns me as I think about our worship? It's that I think we display more AWE and WONDER and ADORATION towards a good HAMBURGER or a tube of toothpaste....than we do in worshiping our God!

Worship is an overflow.......

But that doesn't mean that WE always have to FEEL something in order to worship Him. Because there is NEVER a time when Jesus is NOT worthy of our worship and praise.And when you think of it in those terms, there is NEVER an inappropriate moment to offer that worship to Him, REGARDLESS of what's going on in our lives or how we might be feeling. It's not about US getting something, it's about us GIVING something.

What it DOES mean, is that at the HEART of our worship is an understanding that we are RESPONDING to Him. HE is the One Who initiated this, not US.

And when we begin to re-think our worship in those terms, a couple of thoughts come to mind.
First, I think some of us have lost the TRUTH behind this and have stopped seeing worship as an overflow, and have begun to see it as a duty, or even worse as almost a self-serving thing.

We have fallen into the practice of "worshiping" God to get His favor, or because of what WE can get out of it.

And if that's the case, then our worship is at best shallow, and at worst totally false, because worship is NOT about us - It Never was.

And the second thing. If our worship is an overflow, and if worship is a lifestyle, then there are other ways for that overflow to be expressed than just in corporate singing.

Because herein lies a problem - If you're not a singer, and your perception of worship is that its ALL about singing, then there's a problem. And if that's you, then you are going to NEED to find other ways to overflow.

We can overflow in all sorts of ways - in artistic creativity, in our occupations, in caring for the poor, in promoting justice, in accepting some social responsibility, and in a whole stack of other ways. You might even find cleaning the church as your overflow.

Understanding this, is I guess where I am at with RETHINKING my views of worship,
and I guess what I'm doing this morning, is inviting you to re-think this along with me.

So these are the questions we're faced with - When your heart overflows for God, what does that look like?  Or more the point - What does it make you want to do?

If you were going to form your own response to God, your Worship to him, your response to what He's doing in your life, what would that look like?"

And why I think we need to ask these questions, is because if we are going to expand our expression of worship beyond what it currently is, and again I want to stress that I'm not looking to abandon what we do now, but rather add to it. Then it does mean that in some ways, in some aspects, our personal approach to worship MIGHT need to be re-shaped.

And how we answer those questions, and how we respond to God - how we choose to overflow, is what's going to re-shape that worship. Because our worship NEEDS to be shaped by what GOD is doing in His people's lives right here.

A couple of weeks ago, we began to put some of this thought into action, when we had Francis share with us during our worship. And over the coming months, Sue and the worship team are going to BUILD on this, as more people are asked to come up and share some sort of OFFERING of worship to God. And during this process of rethinking our Worship, we ALL need to consciously REMOVE our pre-conceived notions of worship. Because what we are seeking, is an OVERFLOWING, an OUTPOURING.  It might be a song or a dance, It might be a reading, a drama, a poem, a drawing, a demonstration of some sort. You might like to read a personal journal entry or another piece of writing. ANYTHING that is an HONEST response and a GIFT that you wish to bring to God, that is likely to focus ALL of our attention on God,  and that is going to help people worship through whatever they happen to be feeling at that moment. Those times when we are discouraged, disconnected, depressed, or even angry, because those are the times when we probably most need to connect with God anyhow.

Week after week, Christ washes the disciples' dirty feet, handles their very toes, and repeats, 'It is all right, believe it or not, to be people.'

Our worship should reflect that we are people.....but that we are people of God.

Father God, we come here this morning to worship you, each of us having been touched by you in some way through the week, but often not even recognizing that touch. Father, teach us to worship better. Bring to us lord, a sense of AWE of who you are, and help that awe to pour out of us in worship to you. Help us to be honest with you in our worship, and creative in our outpourings to you.  Be with each one of us I pray in this week to come.....in Jesus name...Amen