Saturday, August 13, 2011
Worship Song Sunday -- To Worship You I Live, by Israel Houghton & New Breed
'Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before Him with thanksgiving and extol Him with music and song. Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker; for He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, the flock under His care.' ~ Psalm 95:1-2;6-7
Worship. We Christians may use this word when referring to a particular portion of our Sunday morning services (i.e., the call to worship), which generally centers around a particular style of music (as my Sunday blog posts reflect -- Worship Song Sunday). It's also used to describe our church buildings (worship centers). Sometimes I wonder if we use the word so much, we've become kind of numb to its true meaning. What exactly is worship? Is it all about the music? In John 4:23, Jesus tells the woman at the well that the Father seeks those who will worship Him in spirit and truth. What does it mean to worship God in that way?
There are no doubt lots of books written on the subject of worship, and I'm sure if you did a Google search, you'd find loads of definitions and info (I did that just now and Google showed 220 MILLION results for the word 'worship'), so obviously, there's nothing new that I can offer. However, this morning, as I turned to Psalm 95 in my Bible, I came across something I'd jotted down in the margins about four years ago:
'Worship: honoring God in gratefulness and humility, with a sincerely loving heart; a giving back to God for Who He is. Worship must come from a humble posture of the heart.' What I get out of that is this: while my worship of my Father God can be done in various ways -- through song, through conversation with Him (prayer) or through service -- it should always be done with humility, thankfulness, simplicity, sincerity, joy and love. When I stumbled upon this song, by Israel Houghton and New Breed, I felt as if I'd walked in on a sweet, intimate conversation between Father and one of His beloved children. To me, this song is sung with those each of those characteristics I just mentioned: humility, thankfulness, simplicity, sincerity, joy and love. It's a simple song of worship, straight from the heart, which is what God truly desires from us and delights in. May you be blessed by this song, and may it usher you directly into the presence of our loving and holy Abba Father.
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