Worship as a Lifestyle

There's nothing quite like a Sunday morning worship service. I can recall many wonderful moments with the Lord as the church has gathered together for corporate worship. And why not? We are all called to be worshipers of our God. However, if the only time we worship God is during a service then we are missing out on what it means to be a genuine worshiper.

When God led Moses to stand before Pharaoh, He instructed him to say "Let my people go so that they may worship Me..." Worship was a part of the Old Covenant and came with a promise of blessing upon the people. Jesus took worship to another level when He said that the Father is seeking out those who would worship Him in spirit and truth. You simply cannot get away from this fact: God loves our worship, we are called to worship, and to miss out on worship is to miss out on the heart of God.

If all we know of worship is what happens on Sunday morning, I have to wonder if we are ever really worshiping. Worship is all about lifestyle. As a believer, worship should be an every day activity. It is the misunderstandings about worship that has caused many problems in the church today. Worship has been divided into at least two camps: traditional and contemporary. Both of these labels fall short of expressing the genuine nature of worship. The traditional camp becomes beholden to what has been. The hymns of the faith get elevated to a place where worship can happen no other way. On the other hand, the contemporary crowd lives with the notion that God cannot move unless the songs are more current. Unfortunately, during all of this debate, both crowds are missing out on what God is doing.

David was a man after God's own heart. His life was the life of a worshiper. The songs that he wrote came out of his own life experiences. This is why you find the vibrant songs of praise, prayers of faith, and memorials to how God has moved in the past in the book of Psalms. When worship is an every day relationship with the Father then we find that there are many reasons to bring praise to His name. We must stop viewing worship as an event and see it as a natural part of our relationship with God.

The reason why the traditional camp and the contemporary camp are missing out is because they have regulated worship as to what takes place on Sunday morning. Imagine if every believer spent time every day in worship of God and then came together on Sunday morning in overflow. That is a worship service that I want to take part in. Corporate worship should be overflow. It should not be the only place that I worship, and it should not be the only time that I get into the presence of God.

Another reason that these two camps have failed in this approach to worship is because we never consider the power behind the songs of our own heart. If I have to sing the words of John Newton, Horatio G. Spafford, or Gloria Gaither, I have regulated myself to their expression of praise when God wants me to worship Him from my own spirit. If I can't feel the presence of God unless I'm singing the songs of Hillsong, Jesus Culture, or Bethel, then I have missed the times of intimacy I could have with the Father through my own songs of praise. When worship becomes a lifestyle then the songs of praise that flow from my own well are the ones that can carry me into the secret place.

Corporate worship among the believers should be a time of recognizing what the Spirit of God is doing in our midst. It's about knowing when and what to sing. It's recognizing the times to meditate on His goodness, how to pray, and expressing our thankfulness to God. How do we get to that point? When we start worshiping as an individual (alone with God) then we don't have to have our favorite song on a Sunday morning. We won't allow our worship to be hindered by what happens in a 30-45 minute worship set.

Before I close, I want to share with you a personal experience. I was driving home yesterday and my mind was consumed with some pastoral "stuff." In other words, my heart was heavy. I was sharing with someone about singing a particular song this past Sunday. As I spoke the chorus of that song, God immediately pulled all of that heaviness away from me. I began to be joyful and have a deep sense of His abiding presence. All I could say was "I want more Lord. Give me more." As I continued to worship Him from this song that was on my heart, God flooded my heart with His goodness. It was absolutely amazing. And this experience reminded me of the importance of personal intimacy with the Lord.

Worship is a lifestyle.