What Is Worship?

“A time will come, however, indeed it is already here, when the true … worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth … for the Father is seeking just such people as these as His worshipers.”  John 4:23

Worship is as imperative to living life rightly with God as the first commandment is to keeping His covenant. Worship is God’s priority.

Questions

Church billboards catch my attention. Invariably they display the name of the church and announce the time when “worship” will occur. There was a similar billboard in front of the church of my childhood.

In that church I grew up understanding that “worship” is the service that occurs in church during a specified hour on Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings. Later in life I attended a church that called “worship” the portion of the Sunday morning service that followed the singing of praise choruses. In liturgical churches the participation in sacred ritual is to “worship.” I experienced that too.

Through these life experiences my collective defining and understanding of worship was as something done, at a specified time and place for a designated duration. Furthermore, worship was centered in certain acts of expression such as singing hymns or choruses, praying, bowing, raising hands, giving tithes and offerings and participating in Holy Communion. This is how the Body of Christ has come to a functional definition of worship. Truly all the above gestures may be worshipful when they are accompanied by a yielded heart.

While attending a ministerial fellowship the attendees were encouraged to transition from welcoming remarks and announcements to a designated time of “praise and worship” with the following announcement:

“We want to get into some praise and worship.”

Even though contemporary choruses would be sung and this well intentioned group was gathered for the specific purpose of ministering to the Lord, the “call to worship” conveyed the same limited understanding of worship as an activity composed of expressive gestures.

Similarly while listening to Christian radio one day the announcer exhorted the listeners saying:

“Don’t forget to worship the Lord on the Lord’s Day tomorrow.”

He was urging the audience to remember to attend Sabbath service which would be synonymous with “worship.”

What we observe here is that into the very fabric of life has been woven an understanding and application of worship that is consistent with Old Covenant thought. Today however, the Father is unveiling worship as He ordained it to be. He is shifting His children into a posture consistent with New Covenant truth that worship is of the heart. It is about relationship with Him before ritual. It is about being in Christ. Such worship flows from the Holy of Holies, from the presence of the Holy Spirit within and is expressed breath by breath, moment by moment, day by day, thought by thought, challenge by challenge, choice by choice, as worshipful yieldedness in oneness with the Father’s will.

Now as I observe those billboards I am aware of the yearning of the Father’s heart for Jesus’ bride, the church, to ascend to the higher ground of the nature of His Son and worship from His perspective. The Father is seeking just such to worship Him in spirit and truth.