In our church vision statement, our purpose (our reason for being) declares that we are a community that seek to worship God in response to his grace. Leading on from there, these notes aim to provide a brief statement of our worship values. Clearly, there is a huge amount written about worship and its theological basis, but these are simply a set of key principles exploring ‘why’ we worship, ‘what’ worship is and something of ‘how’ we worship. Preparing these notes, I found that simply examining the basis for our worship was in itself stimulating: any such exercise inevitably brings us face to face with the One is worthy of our worship and actually promotes worship in the heart! Additionally, these notes will hopefully provide a series of signposts to see that we remain on track and so I have added a few safeguards.

 

Worship is the ultimate purpose of our lives. God, who never acts without purpose, has created us that we might be for the praise of his glory (Eph.1:12). We worship God to bring him pleasure and glory. The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him for ever declares the Westminster Shorter Catechism and our worship is an imperative, not an option: we are instructed to Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength (Deut.6:5) and the psalmist exhorts us to Ascribe to the Lord the glory due to his name; worship the LORD in the splendour of his holiness (Ps.29:2). The whole substance of the Bible teaches us that God wants us to worship him; we were created and, and after the Fall redeemed, to worship. The call to worship, far from filling us with uncomfortable notions that worship is some strangely unfamiliar pursuit, is intended by our loving Heavenly Father to be our normal employment: we are hard-wired for this.

 

Clearly, personal worship overflows into our corporate worship but the call to worship is not only to be seen in terms of an individual exhortation but also reverent, corporate worship brings to expression the very being of the church. The picture is of the church as a worshipping assembly. When God demanded of Pharaoh to let his people go it was so that they may worship me (Ex.7:16b).

 

The Father seeks worshippers but he never compels us. Let us not for one moment assume that the exhortation to worship somehow characterizes worship as a dry and irksome duty. Indeed, we do come because is he worthy of our devotions but, as will be noted later, in his tender grace, he ensures that this is a mutual expression of love: as we delight in him, he delights in us (Zeph.3:17) 

 

Definitions of worship are many and various but essentially, worship is bringing pleasure to God.

It is the activity of glorifying God in his presence with our voices and our hearts. Our worship is felt in the heart, expressed in an appropriate manner and, what we express, is a humbling sense of awe and wonder. We seek to proclaim boundless confidence in God, the one in whom we place our trust, indeed our worship rises and falls with our concept of God. Magnify the Lord cries the psalmist: we cannot make God big but in our worship we celebrate his greatness – we see him big. We celebrate who God is and the awesome nature of his works. We bring tribute to his love, grace, mercy and forgiveness, our hearts responding in love to the one who first loved us and we express thankfulness, admiration, fascination and adoration. However, we also we recognize that worship is no light or cheap pursuit: to make worshippers out of rebels took the incalculable cost of the death of Jesus. We enjoy fellowship with God but we also recognize that this is communion, not familiarity: in the ancient biblical sense, the awfulness of God, must also condition our hearts in worship.

 

Worship is much wider than the songs we sing and, in the fullest sense, encompasses our every activity: it is not part of our life, it is our life. Worship is a lifestyle and the biblical picture is of people praising God in all sorts of situations and circumstances. Everyday activities are transformed into worship when we do them as working for the Lord (Col.3:23), dedicated to him and with an awareness of his presence. We are urged to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God (Rom.12:1); God wants all of us. Worship takes effort and energy, there is an act of will involved and the essence of worship (and much else in the Christian life!) is surrender.  Both our private devotions and corporate worship are inextricably linked to our everyday lives and by God’s grace we need to pursue personal holiness.

 

Scripture tells us that true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth (John4:23). Only the Holy Spirit can enable fallen beings to worship God acceptably. Authentic worship is a spiritual activity when our spirits respond to God’s Spirit. Consequently, our worship will be characterized by the exercising of spiritual gifts. We worship in truth: accurate worship that honours God as revealed in his word: worship that accepts what God says about himself, his Son, his grace, sin and the perilous position of unregenerate men and women.

 

In this section we are focusing on worship in the narrower sense of music and words offered to God when we come together. The intention here is not to concentrate on the important practicalities of planning, preparing and leading a worship time but rather note the significant features that characterize our worship. 

 

Our worship will have a clear God ward focus. Although there will be times when the Lord leads us to offer songs of personal response and times when he ministers to us during worship, our primary objective should be to fix our gaze on him. In fact, the abnegation of self is probably a laudable intention as we come to worship, seeking to magnify the Lord and diminish us: He must become greater, I must become less. (John3:30)

 

In charismatic/evangelical churches we have a well-established style to our worship but we recognize that ‘where’ and ‘how’ we worship is not as important as ‘why’. We seek to maintain freedom in the Spirit as we worship and inevitably our worship reflects our individual personalities so our intention is to encourage folk to express their heart for the Lord, not shoehorn them into a one-size-fits-all style. In this context it is good to reflect that charismatic/evangelicals by no means have the monopoly on how to worship God and other liturgical preferences, whilst not fundamentally shaping our times with the Lord, may have much to show us and may enrich our worship.

 

God-pleasing worship is deeply emotional but also deeply doctrinal: hearts and heads. We can proclaim our love for the Lord in so many different ways but our worship should reflect a sound biblical and theological basis. The content of our worship should never be at variance with the teaching and vision of the church as a whole. Not infrequently, Christians imbibe their theology through what is sung so we look for songs that are doctrinally sound.

 

The amazing unseen reality of New Covenant worship is that we actually draw near to God. We have the privilege of being able to enter directly into his presence. Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith. (Heb.10:22) We worship in the presence of God as we come before his throne; we come ourselves and join our voices to those already worshipping in heaven. This is the reality of New Covenant worship. 

 

As we worship God there is a powerful spiritual warfare element involved: the Lord’s enemies flee. From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. (Ps.8:2) Probably the most efficacious way of piercing the spiritual darkness is wholehearted worship.

 

God is a God of grace and we are not striving for perfection in worship. There is no condemnation when we get it ‘wrong’, particularly when we really step out in the Spirit and perhaps it doesn’t go as we would wish. Equally, it honours God to keep a close eye on our worship, safeguarding both the integrity of our offerings and the heart attitudes which underpin them. The following points are not exhaustive but should provide a useful checklist to ensure that we are going in the right direction.

 

When we fail to worship God, we find something else - even ourselves!

 

Worship is an end in itself and we guard against it being hijacked by other agendas other than glorifying God. Heartfelt worship both encourages and uplifts us as we experience God’s powerful presence but we don’t attempt to induce experiences or whip up false intensity.

 

We are wary of Me-centred worship - check out how many worship songs start with the word ‘I’! Any attempt to produce a desired emotional response or some form of spiritual encounter takes the focus off the Lord and, instead, brings preoccupation with what flows from the worship. Worship is not for our benefit, it is not about what we get out of the worship, although our bounteous Father often blesses us and ministers his grace to us during worship. An over- emphasis on ‘receiving’ during emotionally-charged times of worship may mean that worship takes on an authority of its own and is perceived as the only means of grace.

 

Worship is not preoccupied with the music itself, certainly not with any particular musical style. Worship can become detached from the message of the gospel and concern itself with its relevance to musical trends, performance driven worship and the cult of the worship leader. Worship is not about performance or pretence. The psalms encourage us to play skilfully but it’s not about slickness.

 

We try to demonstrate in our lives what we sing with our lips. God looks past our words to our hearts.

 

As regards both subject matter and style our worship shouldn’t be too narrow in its focus. For example, an unrelieved diet of gentle Christian love songs would scarcely do justice to the multi-faceted attributes of this great Creator God and the Trinitarian nature of our faith. So we seek to present a balance during our worship mindful of the fact that the songs we sing will reveal much about our ‘view’ of God.   

 

Scripture also encourages us to make our worship understandable to visitors and unbelievers and during our worship times, as in all other aspects of our services, we need to make ourselves understandable and not rely on jargon.

 

In conclusion I cannot do better than quote the following passage from A W Tozer’s book Worship: the Missing Jewel

 

The purpose of God in sending His Son to die and rise and live and be at the right hand of God the Father was that He might restore to us the missing jewel, the jewel of worship; that we might come back and learn to do again that which we were created to do in the first place – worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, to spend our time in awesome wonder and adoration of God, feeling and expressing it, and letting it get into our labours and doing nothing except as an act of worship to Almighty God through His Son, Jesus Christ.

Amen!  

Barry Hart
February 2007