The Definition of Worship

A Book Summary

Worship: Rediscovering the Missing Jewel

Part 1: The Definition of Worship

One of the most influential books that I have read in the past year is Worship: Rediscovering the Missing Jewel written by Dr. Gordon Borror. Dr. Borror is the current chair of the music ministry and worship department at Southwestern and has a unique perspective and understanding of ministry having watched the churches progression over his fifty-two years in ministry and education. I hope that you enjoy this summary that will occur over the next four weeks.

When I say the word “worship”, what is your reaction? Is it that is what occurs on Sunday morning at 10:45? Or it may draw your memory to recollect a certain church building you grew up in. Or you may picture robed priests with incense and candles? Or maybe you think of a room surrounded with candles led by an acoustic guitar? Or you may remember a tent on a humid afternoon singing revival hymns. We all have imagery that is associated with a nostalgic time of worship where the presence of God touched us in a real way and demanded a response – either at that very moment or in some habits that we needed to rectify. “What, then, is worship? Worship is an active response to God whereby we declare His worth”

Why worship God? When we worship God we receive and have opportunity to respond in fulfilling our purpose in life. “Worship is about God, and worship is what God desires from us.” God is actively seeking true worshipers. So what is true worship? Worship is revelation and response. In today’s church we have strong expository preaching and as a result the church has become great at hearing the word. However many times we forget to respond. Worship is not just hearing but it is doing the word. Do not just Hear the Word & Receive but also let’s Do the Word & Respond. Worship means to respond to God. If we fail to respond, worship has probably not occurred. Consider Isaiah 6; throughout this passage the prophet receives revelation and responds until ultimately the Lord reveals His plan and a need for a messenger with the prophet responding “Here I am, Send Me”. Our response may not be exactly that as the prophet’s was in Isaiah, it might look like a change in lifestyle, repentance of a certain sin, or a change in perspective; regardless of what it looks like, there must be a response.

A response that I have been mindful of lately is intentional fellowship. I’ve said it before, but the honest truth is on the outside I don’t have much in common with a majority of the people in the church I attend. That is the way it should be – a Church is a unique group of people that are only assembled because they have ONE Unifying factor, which is “Jesus is Lord”. If this is the case and the church believe this, then why is it that often when the church gathers for fellowship the only talk that occurs is about the weather or other types of “filler” conversations? If Christ is truly the only unifying factor, why does the church not talk about what He is doing in our lives and how He is growing us?

A few weeks ago on a Sunday Morning I was reminded how important it is that we have intentional fellowship and share one another burdens by an older man in my church. I had just returned from a whirlwind trip to Mississippi in which I had seen my grandmother alive, seen her die, and led out in her funeral, I was loaded with emotions and just desired for the Sunday to be over quickly. An older man came to me hugged me and truthfully told me he cared for me, loved me, and was praying for me. He didn’t have to go out of his way to do that, he didn’t have to open up my emotions, but he did. He could have taken the easy road and come to church and left church. Why would he take time to share my burdens? He did this because he is a servant & worshipper. How do we worship God day in and day out? Through responding by Loving God and loving others.

Love = Service = Worship.

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Source: Borror, Gordon, and Ronald Allen Worship: Rediscovering the Missing Jewel.

Eugene: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1982

Who Determines Right & Wrong?

Let me first preface this article with saying I think that it is important as Christians that we be knowledgeable of the non-Christian agenda in the world today. We must know who the people are that we are trying to reach before we can ever reach them. Not that we ever lower the standards of a life that Glorify's God for the sake of being relevant, but at some point and time we have to go where to where the lost are for the sake that some may come to faith and Christ can pull them out of the bondage to sin in which they are enslaved.

With that being said I want to throw a new word out for you that most of you may not be familiar with: "Open-Marriage". This is a word that I was not familiar with until recently. An Open-Marriage can be defined as a marriage in which the partners agree that each may engage in extramarital sexual relationships, without this being regarded as infidelity. You may say, "THAT'S CRAZY!" like I did when I first heard of this arrangement but the fact of the matter is these types of "agreements" are on the rise.

The hope/reasoning in the "open-marriage" agreement is that a large portion of marriages fail because of the lying and distrust that goes along with being unfaithful sexually in the marriage. Therefore if we just accept that we can be with other sexual partners and don't have to lie about it then at least our marriage will last and not be filled with lies and distrust.

The first time that I heard about an "open-marriage" agreement was actually at a church - Fellowship Church in Dallas. Last September there was a filming of a Nightline Debate "Are We Born To Cheat". One of the panelist had found the answer through an open marriage agreement. The second time I have heard about this agreement was through an article on CNN where a lady was being proposed to join an open-marriage agreement. The lady did inevitably turn the agreement down but I just want to throw out some quotes from her rationality of whether or not to participate in this type of relationship:

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"Telling the truth shows your partner respect, as does following agreed upon rules -- for example, keeping your partner in the loop as to where you have been and who you have been with."

"The goal of an open marriage is to never have to lie -- to create an environment where you can be open about anything.."

"Basically, the thought is that if you truly love your partner, you want them to live their fullest life -- flings and all. Flings are simply superficial sensory delights. There's no difference between your partner enjoying a pizza with anchovies without you and your partner enjoying a blonde with blue eyes without you."

"In a good open marriage, you are simply creating a buffet of sexual experiences, so nobody feels like they are starving for new sensations. This honesty enables couples to avoid the emotional downward spiral of hidden affairs because the need for secrecy is removed."

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This is where the world is in it's rational. This is a generation who has grown up in broken homes and seen how their parents marriages didn't work and now are striving for answers to how to just make a marriage work. This is a world who has turned to the movie theater to define "love".

True biblical love is a verb. It requires action through the form of service and selflessness. The only way that we can understand how a marriage is to work is through looking at God's relationship with us. God has taken us - sinful and dirty - and made us His Sons and Daughters. If God could do that for imperfect you and I then we love our spouse in-spite of our imperfections.

Who Determines Right and Wrong? God.

How will they know if we don't tell them? Better yet how will they know if we don't show them? The world is not looking to the church for answers today - why would they? Our divorce rate is as high if not higher than the world around us. Everyday you hear of leaders in the church who have fallen to sexual temptation and their marriage is in shambles - Why would the world listen to the church if we can't live what we believe? There is a far deeper problem in the church today in the lack of intimacy that we have with the Father.

Look at how God has loved you, sinful and unclean - and love others, including your spouse in the way that God first loved you.

The Proper Perspective

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus Ephesians 2:4-6

Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Blessed indeed,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!” Rev 14:13

In life we all have certain perceptions and perspectives. Prior to two weeks ago I had a certain perception of death but I had no perspective on it because I had not experienced that as a reality with anyone really close to me. When you experience death, the true absence of never having the opportunity to see a person again this side of heaven, it changes your perspective.

When I left Dallas a few Sundays ago I knew that my grandmother was ill but I did not fully encompass the fact that she was near death till I got to speak to her on Sunday Night. My grandmother was not only a strong believer but she lived what she believed – a rarity in life. She was truly the most selfless person I have ever met, a woman who fed, clothed, and loved total strangers, she didn’t just talk about the gospel or sing about it, or read about it, she lived it. Even as my grandmother was preparing for death she wanted us to read her scripture and sing her songs of the faith that was not just a story or past time to her but was her life. It was because of my grandmother being a Godly Christian Mother and Example that I was able to have a mother who was a Godly Christian Example so that I can be a father who sets Godly Christian Example one day.

As we finished the funeral on Thursday I can truly say that my perspective on life was changed through death. My grandmother was not a very financially wealthy person, she didn’t have many awards or accomplishments, she never went to college and never had a long successful career, but at her time of death one can only hope to impact as many people as she did for the kingdom. Testimony after testimony at her memorial service told of how she had utilized every breath to point back to the one who had given it to her.

Thus my perception of death has changed and impacted my perception of life. The questions that I have asked myself the past week I will ask of you; What are you doing with your time here on earth? Is it wasted or are you using every second that you are given to make a difference in the eternity of those around you? I know I waste a lot of time doing things that are meaningless and do not place enough time in doing the things that are eternal. My perception of my life has changed through a new perception of death – my life is not my own but is given to me to be first and foremost worship God and to second point others to know God.Maybe you can evaluate your own life today as well and ponder upon how your life can better fulfill these purposes.

You should be the praise of every tongue, Jesus

You should be the joy of every heart

But until the fullness of Your kingdom comes

Until the final revelation dawns

Send us out

-Matt Redman-

I am merely an average twenty-something....But God...

I am not much different than the average 25 year old in America. I went to all the way through the public education system, played sports (and stunk at most), joined clubs, and was involved with all the normal activities associated with the age range I was in. During High School I was rebellious like a majority of teenagers, I knew it all and my parents knew nothing even though my grades showed that I "needed improvement".

Not unlike many Americans graduates of High School I went to college uncertain of what I specifically wanted to do with my life, I made many friends whom I am still in contact with today and did many things I regret while in college - not unlike many others. Just as many others did I graduated college with the attitude and confusion of "what now?" while working a job just to pay rent and pretend like I was still in college without having to do the school work. You see everything about my life is average, nothing is spectacular about the choices I've made, who I am, or the family that I came from. I am average.

I said, "God Take Control"...

However in the past decade I have noticed that their is something different in my life. Even amidst my average life their is something that is not so quite average about it. Somewhere along the path of my life something that was to big or to unimaginable for me to even wrap my head around happened. I was broken inside. There was a hurt inside that was indescribable - like the hurt when someone close to you dies and you realize for the first time that you can never see or talk to them again. It was like I was eternally separated from someone that I had never even known. Who was this or what was this feeling? I felt as if I could do nothing right, every choice I made was wrong and resulted in unforgivable consequences. Somewhere along my life God revealed Himself to me. I'm not sure when it happened or how it happened - All I know multiple times along the way I have prayed, "God, I cannot do this on my own, I need you to take control and direct my paths" and God has taken this average life of mine and made it an exceedingly great life for Him.

There Internal Battle of Godly Maturity vs. Youthful Selfishness

Just because I have prayed that prayer multiple times doesn't mean that life is automatically easy. Each day I have choices that I have to make. So what impacts the choices I make? There are actually a few things.

In society right and wrong can change yearly, monthly and daily. In 1960 it was wrong for a black man to drink from the same water fountain and a white man - today we have a black man as president. How did the rules of what was right or wrong change? Or was it always wrong and we were just confused? What is right and wrong and can you answer that? Does it cahnge from person to person? So how do you measure what is write and wrong in the choices that you make daily? In my life I feel as if I have a perfect example of what is right and what is wrong through the life that Jesus Christ lived. Think about it - a man that always did what was right? That is impossible for any of us to even wrap around in our head, I can't even go a day with making all right choices.

So I have an example of what is right and wrong, thats great, but at the same time what good is it? Many of us have sat down and pretended we were going to be artistic by trying to copy a beautiful sight that we can see in nature down on a piece of paper for others to see. Maybe it turned out different for you, but even though I had the perfect example of beauty right in front of me, the drawing I attempted to copy down on a piece of paper was atrocious. However when I was in college an incredible technological invention came to be, the digital pocket camera. Now when I hiked places and saw these incredible natural beauties, I was no longer dependent upon trying to capture the beauty by myself but had a tool to assist me in capturing it perfectly.

Life is similar - even though we have the perfect example of Jesus Christ portrayed for us in scripture if we try to imitate or copy the perfect life Jesus Christ lived, we always ends up failing atrociously. But just as the digital pocket camera is a tool to assist us capturing beauty, when Christ died, He left us the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is fully God indwelling inside of us, helping us to live lives that glorify God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes when I go on a hike and I take pictures to capture the beauty that I have seen, I get home and plug the camera into my computer and the picture are still atrocious. Sometimes its blurry because I jerked it at the wrong time, or sometimes its washed out because I pointed it to close to the sun, or ect. you get the picture. The camera was made to function perfect, made to take gorgeous pictures and one of the best technological advances of the past century. However for me to be able to capture gorgeous pictures I must be familiar with the camera. I must know the camera inside and out, know all the functions, know how to change the exposure, shutter speed, and all the trivial things of photography. If I know the camera and how it functions, in even the most difficult settings I can accomplish a beautiful photograph.

It it is the same way with God. Just because we have the perfect example in Christ, and we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us - it doesn't mean we won't ever botch things up. However the more that we begin to learn God inside and out, the more we begin to have an intimate relationship with Him, the more that we learn to hear His voice and the Spirit living inside of us then the more He will be able to accomplish beautiful photographs in our own lives.

We Were Made to Fail - But God...

Growing up I knew who God was and I knew that He desired to have a relationship with me. Even with that knowledge there were periods where I would botch things up so bad that I felt as if I had to hide from God until I cleaned myself back up. I knew and still know how Adam and Eve felt when they first sinned with eating the fruit from the forbidden tree. They felt shame. They got the Holiness of God. I think anyone who truly knows God gets the Holiness of God and the vastness of our sin. However I don't know if everyone gets the grace of God. In the Ephesians we can read about the vastness of our sin how deep and dark and atrocious our sin is to God. But the amazing part, the part that took me forever to really comprehend, is found in Ephesians 2. It says that even though we are sinful and dead in our sin, God, because of His great love, made us alive with Christ, and has saved us out of our sin because of grace. (Eph 2:4-5) This is phenomenal - when we do something wrong we don't have to hide it, God knows that we are sinful! Who knew? In actuality we are embedded with sinfulness, it is who we are. Us trying to pretend we are not sinful and attempting to live lives apart from sin is like a 400 lb man trying to pretend he can attempt extreme sports - its just not going to happen no matter how hard you try.

When I truly began to understand this concept it made my life so easier! No longer did I have to pretend I was something I was not. I was sinful! I was full of sin and I didn't have to pretend I lived a perfect life! Growing up in church my whole life I had always felt as if we had to guard the sin in our lives and have this false pretense when we went to church that everything was perfect in our lives. When I finally understood the concept that if I could live a perfect life - then there would be no need for Jesus to die on the cross - there was such a freedom from the chains of sin that I cannot even describe. Through this basic concept I had a better understanding of Who God was and what my relationship with Him looked like.

I am human. I am sinful. I have no hope of ever living a perfect or attaining eternal life without God. BUT GOD!!!! Being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even though we were dead in our trespasses (sin), made us ALIVE together in Christ - by His GRACE WE HAVE BEEN SAVED!!! What a difference this made in my outlook in life. No longer was I living not to fail, but I was living a life to point to God.

In every choice I begin to make after I realized this truth it was not for some legalistic law, or what can I do to stay close to perfect, but it was, "What Can I do to Point Back to what God Has Done in me?".

This principal understanding changes everything!

When Satan Temps Us To Despair...

I get the concept that I am a sinner. I get the concept that God doesn't expect me not to be a sinner. I get the concept that God loves me in spite of knowing that I am a sinner. But, there are those days, those weeks, and yes even sometime times those months, when Satam Temps me to despair. He points out just how little I have to offer and how sinful and I am. When Satan does this, if even just for a moment I forget to look towards the cross and the grace of God - I began to feel the guilt within. One of my Favorite Songs at the time has a verse that is amazing:

When Satan tempts me to despair, and tells me of the guilt within, 
upward I look and see Him there Who made an end to all my sin. 
Because the sinless Savior died,my sinful soul is counted free; 
For God, the Just, is satisfied to look on him and pardon me. 

It may sound stupid but there are days in which I will feel Satan to begin to tempt me with the despair inside of me and I will just begin to sing this verse of the song. Realizing the truth found in Romans 3 ....there is no distintion...for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and all are justified by grace as a gift through the redemption of Jesus Christ....Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded! By what principle? Of Works? No, by the principle of faith!.... If I draw back in to the proper perspective and realize that I have not been saved by anything that I have done right, but by the things that Jesus did right. I am alright because God is satisfied to look upon Jesus and pardon me from all the things that I have done wrong.

Sometimes you just have to tell Satan to back off!!! Our confidence is not in our ability to not fail - if it was we'd all be damned.

What Now?: Love = Worship = Service

I've talked a lot about how I can't accomplish perfection. So why even try?

I recently got married to the love of my life. When we began to date I told her if she was looking for prince charming or the perfect man portrayed in the cinema world then we might as well never even began the relationship because I would let her down. Luckily for me she was looking for an imperfect man who was redeemed. I acknowledged that I would fail her in our relationship and she acknowledged that she would fail me - so do we not try? Heck No! I love my wife! I'm not talking about this fake cinema love that lasts a year or two till the other person disappoints you then you're off with them. By me saying I love my wife I mean I serve her. Love in a true biblical relationship is a verb - you love by serving one another - putting each other above your own self.

I think the imagery of a man and woman goes perfectly with our relationship with God. Actually I would argue that apart from a healthy relationship with God you can never fully understand how to have a biblical healthy marriage.

I know I am not perfect! Yes! So why try? Because God first loved (served) me. I love God because He made a way for redemption. Through my life I attempt with everything that is in me to Worship/Glorify/Love/Serve God. All those terms over the past few years have seemingly become one to me. If I do one, I accomplish them all - I can't separate my Love from my Service, my service glorify's God, and all of it is Worship.

If I had married my wife and told her I was not perfect but yet I did nothing to love or serve her, how healthy do you think our marriage would be? Sure we would be married, and I still might get all the benefits of being married as well but what would I be telling my wife of her worth to me? Now That's a silly question, but how many of us do the same thing to God after we begin our relationship with Him? How many of us get "fire-insurance" and then quit pursuing ways to love God who loved us so greatly He sent His Son to die for us?

So why is their a need to even try if I can just be pardened by the Son? When you love someone you show them by serving them. Love = Service. If I desire to respond to the one who first loved me by worshiping Him then I will serve Him, declaring my love and His worth, worshiping Him and pointing all the glory back towards him.

Conclusion

I am an average twenty-something in America. I struggle with the same temptations, pressures, and emotions of all those around me. I like most twenty-somethings have financial struggles and stresses. I am just average. But, God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved ME, even when I was dead in MY trespasses, make ME alive with Christ, and saved ME by grace. Amen.