I am thinking about ‘worship’ a lot lately.
Can’t get over the feeling that something is missing, something is wrong.
I’m talking about in the church in general, at least as I have experienced it.
I remember hearing the story behind the song “The Heart of Worship”, and as I reviewed this video, I can relate to what Mike and Matt are saying here… can you?
Jesus follower
trying to find His way
I have been involved in church music for over 15 years and this is just my experience and thoughts.
Heart of Worship is a great song and a great reminder that worship is all about God and I love singing it. But I have experienced this story being used to make the worship team check their motives. In my experience it seems whenever the music strives to be excellent it seems the music team needs to check their motives. While its extremely important to check your motives I have done that so much at times that I become obsessive about checking my motives and it has sucked the joy out of it and I just think Im unworthy and want to quit.
I am a musician so good music moves me. This is not true of everyone. A lovey dovey holy huddle does not move me. Everyone is different. Some people would rather skip the music and just listen to the sermon or worship in other ways. Someone argued with me once that its just the good music that is moving you its not God. I know that is NOT true. I went to a U2 concert a couple weeks ago. The music was awesome! I was jumping up and down and singing and cheering. I was so excited. But I was not worshipping. It was ALL about the music (although I did say a prayer thanking God that I was there and thanking Him that there is such awesome music). It is a totally different feeling when it is awesome music and it is about God and Im worshipping. THe music moves me and I feel the Holy Spirit and it is all about God. I am singing TO God. I was not singing TO God at the U2 concert although maybe some people could have been but I was just enjoying the beautiful music.
There have been times when I have felt like jumping up and down and cheering for God during worship at church. The music was so awesome and I felt so excited about GOD. I wish I could do that at church. Sometimes I have jumped up and down at church and it was awesome but you cant do that when everyone around you is crossing their arms. People have to make the effort to worship. Even if the music isnt very good I will still make the effort to worship. I just close my eyes and sing to Him but if there are sour notes I just cant sing.
One of the best worship experiences I’ve had at church was during a service and someone in the congregation went in the back of the church and just started dancing. I was on stage singing so I could see the whole thing. It was no big deal. No one looked at her like she was strange. She was just dancing and praising God and it was so cool like she was dancing with God. I thought this is just a little taste of what it will be like in heaven.
I think we should always give God our best offering and not our leftovers. This is true for the offering of music and worship. A music team should practice and do their best so they can give their best offering to the Lord. When there are so many mistakes and the musicians are unsure they cant worship then it is a distraction and it distracts people from worshipping. I think Satan hates it when we having awesome music and everyone is into it. It sometimes seems when it is music for God its OK to have crappy music because God will love it anyway. Which is true if it is done sincerely but we should always try our best.
Anyways…I have to go but this being said…the story of when the music fades is inspiring.
Interesting…good to listen to
we all get to it in different ways.
The thing is: worship is worshipping. Worshipping who? For us it is worshipping GOD. So if we come to worship time and just want to be fed or filled or want happy emotions or for others to see God or to get prayer answered… then it is not really worshipping. Then it should be called something else.
To worship is to be going out from ourselves to GOD. It is about loving Him and honoring Him and praising Him for His Goodness… in the process we often do get emotions, or answers to questions or we see another side of something that God is teaching us. During worship tie songs of confesson and songs of our need are okay because when we really look at HIM we see our failures and our need but they still should be in the context of worshipping HIM. Get our confessions out quickly so we are washed clean to worship HIM better. Tell our needs to acknowledge they are there but that we are trusting HIM to work them out in His time. And get back to admiring HIM.
This suddenly sounds like a rant but I won’t delete it because it is important.
Oh God, You are Awesome. Teach me, teach all of us what worship really means. We praise You.
Thank you Norm for posting that. Couldn’t agree more with their sentiment. It was kind of fun/scary imagining being in that service where they totally did away with the music portion and let it be a time of sharing as people felt moved… how uncomfortable that must have been!! Yikes. Good for them for persevering, and then being flexible enough to change it up again as needed(introducing musci again).