Growing up, I would’ve told you that worship is nothing more than singing songs on Sunday morning. Maybe that’s all you see worship as right now. Or maybe you still don’t get what this whole worship thing even is.
The Oxford dictionary defines worship as “the feeling or expression of reverence and adoration for a deity”. This made me wonder, when was the last time I truly, actually looked at God with reverence and adoration? And how many times have I given empty, worldly things the reverence and adoration God rightly deserves? Worship, when it is given to God and God alone, can move us to this reverence and adoration, which is why I’ve come to realize that worship is so much more than that weird 20 minutes in-between the announcements and the message at church.
Since I’m an English major, I’ll also tell you that the word “worship” is a mass noun, meaning it doesn’t have a plural form. You can’t break it into pieces or add it all up. But I think this also means you can’t halfheartedly worship. Yeah, you can sing words in church without fully meaning it, but when it comes down to it, you’re either worshipping and bringing praise to God, or you’re not.
So Why is God worthy of worship? A better question is, why would we ever give our worship to anything else?
Now that one’s easy. Sin. I can’t tell you how many times I let sin distract me from worship or convince me there is someone or something more deserving of my praise.
But that God chooses to choose us despite our sin, our shame, and the fact we have the audacity to give our time and attention to worthless and empty things, now that is a reason to fall down onto our knees in surrender and worship.
Worship is also more than just music. The definition does not limit worship to a building or a time of a day or even a particular order or way of doing things. Worship is not only done by Hillsong or Bethel or some guy wearing ripped jeans and sneakers. Worship is not a list of rules or a way to make yourself look better.
No, worship is beautiful and raw. It is both sacred and everyday.
Worship is waking up in the morning and making a conscious choice to find joy in a God whose mercies are new.
Worship is giving time to spend time learning and growing closer to God.
For me sometimes, worship is blaring music in my car and bringing praise to God in the middle of the mundane, or sometimes turning off the radio altogether and worshipping God through prayer and praises.
As we see tonight, worship is using our God-given talents and abilities to give the Giver the glory he deserves, through dance, through art, through music, and the list goes on and on. That thing you’re really good at? You can use it to worship God.
Worship is finding yourself on your knees with nowhere to turn, laying every defense and every ounce of pride at the savior’s feet.
Worship is feeling at a complete and overwhelming loss for words, awestruck at the sheer glory and mightiness of God himself.
Worship is allowing yourself to simply sit. To dwell in the presence of God. To humble yourself before him and say, “You are God and I am not.”
I think that’s what worship is, to swallow our pride and our confidence and to simply come before the throne of grace and say
“You are God and I am not.”
To acknowledge who God is and what He has done, that He from the very beginning set out to save his fallen creation, sending His son to die on the cross for the very worst of you and me, and ultimately defeating death and sin and every single thing we think is too big and impossible for God.
“You are God and I am not”
If you let it, worship can happen in traffic, walking to class, talking to a coworker, living out God’s purpose as a lawyer or a doctor or a janitor or a bus driver or a teacher or anything in between. In any moment you can say with confidence,
“God, You are God and I am not”,
you are worshipping the One who is most worthy of worship.
I thought about listing scriptures of all of the ways God is so good, so fulfilling, so overflowing with grace, so intricate, so loving, so mighty, and so, so worthy of worship, but instead I urge you to look for yourself,
to see,
to grow,
to learn,
to spend time in humble worship before the Lord himself, because it’s hard to truly appreciate something you don’t fully understand.
I want to leave you with Psalm 63, a Psalm of David, one of the best examples we have of a worshipper of God.
“O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you.
As in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
Beholding your power and glory.
Because your steadfast love is better than life,
My lips will praise you.
So I will bless your name as long as I live;
In your name I will lift up my hands.
My soul will be satisfied.”
We worship God to glorify him, but that doesn’t mean we don’t get anything out of worship. For me, worship brings peace,
freedom,
and joy. It helps me see clearly those words that David wrote, that God really is more satisfying than all of the rest of it.
This is worship. Worship is all the things I said and more. To praise the Lord and all that He did for us and all that He is. And None of my words are worthy of that praise.
Let these very words be worship to God,
because God, You are God and I am not.