It's Christmas time! In this months podcast we have a fantastic interview from Darlene Zschech and a great new song from Beth Croft
How Do You Define Worship?
Defining worship is a bit of a tricky one. I recently watched a documentary about Turner, the great impressionist painter, who was famous for the way he captured
light. Turner was a master at painting the unpaintable, working in the open air, often in dodgy weather. He used to work furiously fast, so that he'd capture the changes in the light, landscape and sea as they happened.
The TV presenter, an artist in their own right, set out to try and paint like Turner one afternoon, but found that as they began to paint the light, the sea, the sky, they could not begin to do justice to what they were encountering. The sky was simply too massive and luminous, the sea too powerful and textured... it was almost impossible to capture them on a simple canvas.
When we try and define worship, we often find ourselves in the same position. Worship is such a vast concept that no one definition can contain it. Instead, I find I end up collecting little quotes and ideas that give me glimpses of the incredible, dynamic adventure that we call worship.
Here are a few definitions, but I'd love to hear your favourites too, so please add your own below:
A definition we've been using a bit with Worship Central is: “Worship is the total alignment of our heart, soul, mind and strength with the will of God. It is our whole-hearted response to God’s extravagant love and mercy.”
I also love Roman's 12's all-encompassing "offer your bodies as a living sacrifice"
Then these are few I've heard again recently that I think are great...
“To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.” (William Temple)
"Worship is a deliberate and disciplined adventure in reality." (Willard Sperry)
And for something a bit different, an Eastern Orthodox perspective:
"Christian worship is the response of men to the Divine call, to the 'mighty deeds' of God, culminating in the redemptive act of Christ." (George Florovsky) Basically, it's all about Jesus...
"Worship is not primarily man's initiative but God's redeeming act in Christ through his Spirit." (Nikos A. Nissiotis) Basically, it's not about us, it's all about Jesus...
Over to you... what good definitions have you heard?
magoodelmundo
From Building Bridges Christian Ministries
1 February 2010 - 3:37am
Worship is man's response to a revelation of who God is...
I define it as 'True worship is an all consuming, truth filled, Spirit fuelled response to the revelation of God'
or in simpler terms
'All of me for all of him'
Although my favourite is the William Temple one!
There is very little in the New Testament about the forms and style and content of corporate worship. Following Old Testament forms too closely contradicts the obsolescence of the wineskins. God must mean to leave the matter of form and style and content to the judgment of our spiritual wisdom—not to our whim or our tradition, but to prayerful, thoughtful, culturally alert, self-critical, Bible-saturated, God-centered, Christ-exalting, reflection driven by a passion to be filled with all the fullness of God. I assume this will be an ongoing process, not a one time effort. - John Piper
Nice - like all of those!
putting God first in everything
Worship is; a physical responce, to a spiritual encounter with God, expressed in an emotional out working. besicially its everythe we do because of everything God has done for us.
I love the line: God is God, I am not. To me worship is constantly realizing this. Our life, everything we do, should be all about God instead of God being a part of our lives. Someone said: God doesn't play a role in my life... he is the director".
Brooke Fraser wrote in the Dessert Song: All of my life, in every season, You are still God, I have a reason to pray, I have a reason to worship. Again, it's not about us, it's about God, It's about Jesus.
I believe the Holy Spirit moves us to this kind of worship, where our flesh always longs to put us in the center. That's why Jesus calls us to crucify our flesh and worship Him in spirit and in truth.
I don't think we could ever define worship, we won't really know what it means until we meet God in heaven.
When I do think about it what comes to mind is Our Lives.
When we know the the true Gospel and what God has done for us, what else could we do or want to do but give him our lives. Not that it's easy, but I feel that's the point, we should always strive to give God our best.
It amazes me everyday how a sinner like me has been saved by God.
Ditto Janno! Worship is being in that perfect spiritual seat with the Holy Spirit that surrounds you. The Holy Spirit was so strongly present this weekend at Emerge. When I arrived on Saturday morning and walked into the ballroom I broke into tears. Not of unhappiness or issues at all actually, it just completely overwhelmed me with suttle compassion, authority and love.
Love this thread :) My favourite definition is from a book by Louie Giglio, called 'The Air I Breathe':
Worship is...
our response,
both personal and corporate,
to God -
for who He is!
and what He has done!
expressed in and by the things we say
and the way we live.
Fantastic little book, which, despite being entirely about worship, doesn't actually talk about collective, congregational worship until its penultimate chapter. That to me also speaks volumes in terms of defining worship - when I'm leading worship or playing in bands or worshipping at a meeting, it's so easy to box worship as that bit that sandwiches the teaching', when it's so much more than that.
So how do we define worship outside of the 'Sunday-morning-box'? In every single moment, of every single day, I believe that we are worshipping something. It is that which we are driven by, that to which we are giving our effort to. There is a contested throne of our hearts - money, beauty, sexuality - they can all be driving our actions, leading our finances, taking our time and pulling us away from worshipping our Creator. One day, we will see Him seated on the actual throne, and everyone will know the true King - but, until then, if we are going to worship God in our day-to-day lives, we constantly have to be searching our hearts, deposing whatever is seated on the throne of our hearts that shouldn't be, and replacing that with God. When God is seated on our throne, and everything that we do, in every moment, of every single day, we are seeking to serve Him, then we are truly worshipping - just imagine what our worship together would be like if this was the case!
I guess the final thing to say is one of the most obvious - Robert Webber wrote a book by the same title - 'Worship is a verb'. Whatever it is, we have to do it! It's not a passive concept, but rather one which we have to chose to involve ourselves in, in every single moment, of every single day :)
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