What is Worship?

To truly worship God, one must properly define worship. Bob Kauflin describes worship in "The Bethlehem Conversation". He begins by pointing out that worship is not only a spiritual thing. All people choose to exalt something higher than themselves because they believe it will bring them satisfaction, whether it be reputation, money, or other people. Spiritual worship, however, is directed towards God. It is the believer's response to the grace of God poured out. Kauflin mentions Hebrews 13 and Romans 12 where it equates worship to the sacrifice of ourselves to the Lord whether it be in the form of time, desires, or money. He emphasizes the need to stray away from the limited definition of worship which pertains only to music, and to live in the truth of true Biblical worship.

We worship to exalt Christ's name. In Phillipians chapter 1, Paul describes his eagerness to exalt Christ's name regardless of in "death or life". In order to truly worship our Heavenly Father, we must continuously ask ourselves, "Are we exalting Christ's name?". When we speak, "Are we exalting Christ's name?". When we think, "Are we exalting Christ's name?". Even when we are living our daily life filled with all sorts of activities, "Are we exalting Christ's name?". As flawed human beings that are constantly hindered by the flesh, we have work to do. We must "take up our cross and deny ourselves" in order to refine our faith to look more like Jesus. Luckily, God has promised that his "grace is sufficient" for us in this battle, and we can achieve victory only through Him. When we strive to look more like Jesus through the power of the Spirit, regardless of the area of life it pertains to, we are worshipping in the way we were meant to. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Performance vs Worship Leading

Paul Baloche makes it clear that a worship centered environment begins from the "top down", in the episode "Performance vs Worship Leading". It is the worship leaders' responsibility to guide the congregation into a time of musical worship, but not to worship for them. This is dependent on where the leaders' heart is oriented toward. There will always be the temptation of worshipping for the sake of satisfying the ego, but it's clear that the whole purpose of worship is lost when that desire overshadows the heart to serve. Baloche also points out that in the pursuit of being fully oriented toward the Lord, there's no place for "fake humility", as he puts it. The Lord knows the inmost desires of the heart so there's no reason to put on a fake persona in an effort to follow him. The idea of fighting against the temptation of self glory ties in to what Jesus means when he calls us to "deny ourselves, and take up our own cross". T...
Read more

The Feeling of the Message

Paul Baloche talks about crafting music to fit the "feeling of the message" in this episode of his Youtube Songwriting series. He points out that the first step is deciding what type of atmosphere the song is intended to create. For example, his title "Above All" was meant to be an anthemic song, thus he chose a tune that fit its intended purpose accordingly. Baloche mentions Disney as the king of melodies, noting how many of their songs have beautifully constructed tunes that capture a breadth of pitches which earn a place in our memories. Hints of the styles of these well-written songs are prevalent in other genres of music, further highlighting their brilliance.  The idea of being memorable is an intriguing one. In the context of songwriting, the tunes that are generic and aren't creatively put together are the ones that fade with time. It's the ones that are different, seasoned with flair; those are the ones that are remembered. We must seek to find our ...
Read more

How to Write a Worship Song

In Phil Wickham's workshop titled "How to Write a Worship Song", he outlines the general process by which he writes worship songs. He highlights the importance of life experiences and how they shape themes of songs. Wickham uses the example of God's goodness. Even though it's a common theme among worship songs today, it's possible to experience a different and more personal facet of the the goodness of God to kickstart of worship song. The idea of finding intricacies within themes to write songs is stressed multiple times by Wickham in the workshop.  Wickham describes writing a song like formulating a sentence. A good sentence has a topic with grammatical tools that assist in emphasizing that subject. In the same way, a song also has a topic that's usually amplified in the chorus. The verses and bridge are similar to verbs and adjectives that highlight the importance and applicability of that topic. When we think of songs as sentences, it should demand us ...
Read more