What is worship?
If I were to pass out a questionnaire or poll church going people and ask them what “worship” is, I would imagine most of the answers would have music at their core. For most of us, when we think or try to define worship, music is what comes to the forefront of our minds. There’s nothing wrong with that; music is a great vehicle to express love and adoration to God, but it is a very incomplete understanding of worship, for our worship of God is so much deeper than just song.
Worship is our response to God’s revelation of Himself. God, the creator of all things, sent His son, Jesus Christ, to be the savior of the world, and through the work of the Holy Spirit, you and I can respond to His goodness by giving our whole lives to God and His work as we give Him offerings of praise and thanksgiving and spread the good news of Christ to the nations.
You don’t have to look hard to find examples of worship in scripture; then again, it is a book about God! In Matthew 22:34-40:
34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
This is how we worship! We “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” And we “love your neighbor as yourself.”
We worship the Triune God with our minds as we spend time in His word. We worship God with our heart and soul as we sing songs of praise to Him and sing songs that testify of both who He is and what He has done. We worship God as we fellowship together by loving those around us. We worship Him as we give and as we pray. We worship the One True and Living God as we go to the nations, telling them of His glory and goodness. Our worship is so much more than just singing a song on Sunday; it is loving the Lord God with all that we are.
Doing these things should be our great desire! John Calvin wrote, “We should consider it the great end of our existence to found numbered among the worshipers of God.” We strive to one day be counted among the worshipers of God, forever in His glorious presence, but until that day, we worship Him here on Earth.
Psalm 136:1: “ Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.”
Love you and mean it!
