Worship

Whether or not we ever understand the reason for worship, the human spirit craves the gift of Otherness and the capacity to find in transcendent relationship the center for life and understanding of our purpose. For myself, I find that best fulfilled in the Christian tradition of faith and practice in relationship to God. The context for my worship lies in a commitment to the enterprise of knowing God, not in universal capacities to humanize the divine, but in the awareness of divine initiative toward me. That initiative has been transforming, life-changing, and indeed personal. God has entered into my history with His story. In doing so, He has helped me to define and understand my story.

Worship is response. It is the response to truth revealed. It is the response to love made intimate in the personality of Christ. It is response to the experience of grace and forgiveness. It is a respect and an attitude. Worship is a confessing heart, open to God, seeking and centered upon Christ’s way. Worship reflects our aims and intentions. It defines our obedience and our struggles with sin. Worship takes form and shape first in the heart and mind of the believer. Public or private, our worship focus requires the spirit of truth in relating honestly and openly to God. Worship is sharing as well. Worship is sharing witness to trust and giving testimony to God’s actions and mighty works.

The church takes up the practice of worship as central to its form and substance. The worshipping church is the center-point for the Christian community’s definition of itself in modern times. At the same time, worship can be mistakenly preempted by a failure of the gathered community to engage in that aspect of personal as well as corporate participation in acknowledging and seeking God’s way.

Modern discussions regarding worship too often become wordplays upon gadgetry and modalities of participatory style. The “new thing” sought by God is the heart of faith, acting in trust and obedience toward the Almighty. Worship, as referenced in Romans 12:1-2, is a “presentation” of ourselves as “living sacrifices” unto God. The physical patterns of modalities attached to that proposition pale in significance to the key matters of conviction and trust.

In similar fashion, worship practices that carry marks of tradition associated with a wide variety of denominational and historical and geographic and cultural significance must knowingly acknowledge the basis for such “developments” in context and embrace them to the degree that they allow for communication to a people in need of a cultural translation of the gospel that faithfully calls for faith in ways that do not diminish or destroy the character and nature of divine revelation and the basis for taking such a message of good news to the world. As each of us experience and exercise our faith toward God –let us always remember that He is forever worthy of worship.