Part 2: Worship. what are your motives> where is your heart>

“By all means worship should be passionate, heartfelt and moving. But the point is not to stir the emotions while turning off the mind. True worship merges the heart and mind in a response or pure adoration, based on the truth revealed in the word.”

From my personal experience, I’ve been in churches where they are SO solid when it comes to the preaching. They KNOW their stuff – they teach it well! But the worship seemed to be so dry, like after all they learned they weren’t excited or joyful or even convicted in their worshipful response (through musical response or through their fruits in their walk). On the other extreme, I’ve also had a good taste of people whose focus was ONLY on musical worship without any solid teaching or learning-taking place; I want to talk about these experiences first. I’ve seen people seem so energetic, so alive and so joyful in their musical worship – but when it came to their day-to-day walk with the Lord, I didn’t see any fruits. It was as if when they left their place of worship the flame was extinguished – but as soon as they entered the following week it was re-lit! I never really understood what was going on here… but now I’ve grown to see that aroused passions are not necessarily evidence that true worship is taking place. Genuine worship is a response to divine TRUTH. It is passionate because it arises out of our love for God. But to be true worship it must also arise out of a correct understanding of His law, His righteousness, His mercy and His being. Real worship acknowledges God as He has revealed Himself in His Word. We know from scripture, for example, that He is the only perfectly holy, all-powerful, all-knowing, omnipresent source from which flows all goodness, mercy, truth, wisdom, power, and salvation. Worship means ascribing glory to Him because of those truths. It means adoring Him for who He is, for what He has done, and for what He has promised. It MUST therefore be a response to the truth that He has revealed about Himself. Such worship cannot rise out of a vacuum. It is prompted and vitalized by the objective truth of the Word.

            In the experiences I had, I can’t judge and say these individuals didn’t have a solid or correct understand of who God is as he revealed himself to us in his word, but I can say there was no passion to get to know Him personally or deeply. There was no drive from these people to be in the word – and when you try to push them – they find a way to say that they’re doing okay without it. Or in more unfortunate situations – some of them had a horribly INCORRECT idea of what the bible teaches on God and His Holy Spirit. They were worshiping in response to false teachings, and their ‘worship’ was so vibrant and beautiful looking (or sometimes it was quite scary and frightening) – but something was off – their foundation was off, so how sincere could it really be. It’s quite to sad to think that they truly believe they are sincere – but because their worshiping in response to something that is so not biblically true – I’m not sure they grasp how far off they really are.

“There is certainly no place in the corporate worship of the church for the kind of frivolous, shallow, giddy atmosphere that often prevails in the sort of church that is desperately seeking to be ‘relevant’ for a postmodern comedy-club culture. To exchange the worship service for a circus is about as far from the spirit of biblical worship ‘in reverence and awe’ as it is possible to get. “Reverence and awe” refers to a solemn sense of honor as we perceive the majesty of God. It demands both a sense of God’s holiness and a sense of our own sinfulness.”

The message cannot always be “God is Love”. YES! GOD IS LOVE! But that is not all that He is! We are so blessed that our God and Creator, even though he is just and mighty, has a heart of love for us. That heart of love however, does not take away from our NEED to be convicted and repent of our sinfulness. Gods mercy and his grace are amazing and they are the greatest gift, but we cannot seriously think that we can ignore everything else that God is. God demands our praise, he doesn’t NEED it, but he made us for it – and if we choose to worship in a way that is not pleasing to Him – by all means, he has the right to say to US in the end, “I never knew you!”

“The world is filled with false and superficial religion. We who love Christ and believe His Word is true dare not accommodate our worship to the styles and preferences of an unbelieving world. Instead, we must make it our business to be worshipers in Spirit and in Truth. We must be people who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ and put no confidence in the flesh. And to do that, we must allow scripture alone – sola scriptura – to regulate our worship.”

Real acts of worship must be the overflow of a perpetually worshiping life and real worship is honor and adoration directed to God. To stand on a stage and desire attention, while using the worship of God to get it, is such a sad and frustrating thing to me. If you’ve ever been on a worship team – I’m sure you understand how hard this can be – and it’s something to be learned for everyone. To be on stage in front of hundreds of eyes can plant a seed of pride in you. To learn to take all the attention off of you and direct it upward to God is something to be learned, and I believe that anyone who walks up on stage as a worship leader or member of a team should be learning or already have learned this. I think being able to discern when someone is worshiping with wrong motives is very important as well. I know none of us are perfect, and so to say that you have to have it all together to be on a worship team or to be on stage is kind of silly – but in order to correct someone in their understanding, you need to be able to discern who those individuals are. I have felt at times that some people get up there and put on a show. They think they know what it looks like to be a true worshiper from seeing bands like ‘hillsong’ or ‘jesus culture’ or ‘Kim Walker’ etc., so they imitate that ‘passion’ and they think they’ve got it right – but could they be more wrong!!!! Genuine worship overflows from a perpetually worshiping life! You cannot just act a certain way and think that’s okay. Or even worse – I hope you haven’t been convinced that certain actions truly portray genuine worship. Now I know many people who are so real and so genuine in their worship – on or off stage – and you can see it through the way they express themselves. It is not the action of raising your hands, or dancing, or smiling etc. that makes you true worshiper – NO, it is the HEART BEHIND IT. These people will strive to worship genuinely all the time, it’s not just about a show on stage and it certainly is not about YOU at all! Genuine worship is from the heart and it is directed ONLY to God! Being able to discern when someone is not worshiping with the right intentions or motives, or maybe they are not worshiping with the right focus (that focus being God), it incredibly important.

“Worship as the word of God presents it is internal, sacrificial, active and productive. That is not at all like the worlds concept of worship, yet it is the only kind of worship God recognizes. It is the purest kind of worship – the kind that ascends to God as sweet incense, the kind that is expressed continuously in every aspect of our lives by sharing with others, doing good works, and offering praise to God. That is the kind of worship God desires. It is worship in its deepest, most spiritual sense.”

*all blue quotes are from John MacArthur: Worship, the ultimate Priority.*