What Is Worship? | Week 2
Worship In Spirit
Last week, I wrote about the necessity to make some course corrections with regards to how we think about, speak about, and pursue our worship of God. In our culture today, I believe there’s an overemphasizing of the artistic, musical expression as Christians gather. I’m not saying music is bad, or that we shouldn’t use it to express the thoughts and emotions that we have toward our Creator. Rather, I’m afraid we’ve lost sight of our foundation. The foundation is crucial. Without it, there is no strong, right, and true growth. The foundation of a worshipful Christian is not and should not be an expression in music.
Why? Well first, we need to think about people. Not everyone feels as engaged or as connected with music as others do. That’s just the reality. Those who are musicians obviously love it. And there are obviously those who can’t play an actual instrument or sing a single note but can be so moved when listening to music that it’s something they need on a daily basis. They connect with it. This is true for Christians and unbelievers alike. But there are those who simply don’t connect with music on an intense level.
So what do we do? As someone who’s been involved with music in the local church for a while, I’ve thought about this question a lot. Do we force this ONE expression on them week in and week out, claiming that they need to get excited and passionate about “worship time” (singing and playing music) when they come into church on a Sunday morning?
Christians are being guided to believe and therefore live out the misconception that we worship God with four or five songs being sung and/or danced to on a Sunday morning in a local church building. Is it being preached as such? No. But is it being acted out? Yes. And true belief comes from our actions, not just what we say. This can’t be the foundation of a Christian’s lifestyle of worship. But yet, in today’s church, it is. We’re misleading the people.
Secondly, musical expression can’t be the foundation that Christians build their worship on, because it’s not what Jesus speaks about when he gives us insight into how to worship God.
“But a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father is seeking such as these to worship Him. God is Spirit, and His worshipers must worship Him in spirit and in truth”
–John 4:23–24, ESV
I talked more about the “true worshipers” portion of this text last week. So for this, I’ll focus solely on the portion that says God is seeking worshipers who worship him in spirit (and in truth, but that’s next week’s post). I think all Christians can agree, if there’s anything we can and should use as a foundation, it would be the words that Jesus speaks.
We must worship God with our spirits. Again, this will get dragged into the context of singing songs on a Sunday morning, but I think it’d be wise for us to avoid doing that. Why? Because it’s too narrow a conclusion. Jesus posits here that true worship occurs from those who worship with their spirit. Isn’t our spirit the thing that everything else derives from?
When looking more closely at this particular passage, I used the Greek to see what words helped define or describe the word used for “spirit” here. It’s described as wind, breath, and spirit (again). We know there is no scientific definition for such things as the human spirit, but we all know what it is. So when we think about our spirit and being like breath, is it not fitting that God, in Genesis 1, breathed life into us?
Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being
–Genesis 2:7, ESV
The breath of life, the spirit given to us from our Creator, the very thing that powers each and every second that we exist on this earth should be directly given to God for his glorification! To claim that this occurs most frequently or in its best form when we sing songs about him is a shallow attempt to match the beautiful and terrifying revelation that Jesus gave us. Worship with our very breath, our spirits, the essence of our existence? How? I don’t know. But I think it’s at least important enough to focus a little less on what songs I’m singing and focus more on how my life can be offered up as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1).
—Luke Soliwoda