We have all experienced it before. We have all had Sundays when we come into a worship service and just don’t feel like worshipping. If we are honest, we would rather be somewhere else, perhaps sleeping at home or just chilling. Yet we are made to stand and sing song after song, sometime repeating stanza after stanza, pushing us to the limits of our physical tolerance. So we fake it. We raise our hands like everyone. We put on the intense pained expression that creates the illusion that we are deep in worship. We seem so spiritual. During the slow songs, we close our eyes and bow our heads…waking up only when we are asked to stand again. Why does worship seem so life-transforming for some and such a chore for others? Why do some have such intense experiences and others only dryness? This is an important question that can perhaps be answered if we understand our true motivations to worship. Some people say we must worship God whether we feel like it or not because we are commanded to do so. While I see some merit in the discipline of worship, such emotionless stoic worship simply cannot be sustained. We need to come back to the heart of worship. Here are two thoughts in respect of worship:
The Start of Worship – The Heart of God
Foster once said that worship is our hearts response to the overtures of love that flow from the heart of God. This is and must be the starting premise of our worship. Worship is the act of “loving God back”. And we can only truly love him back if our hearts have come to experience his love. Many a times, we come into worship feeling so far from God either because of sin or pure neglect in our intimacy with him. The problem with sin is that it casts over us a spirit of condemnation such that when we try to enter into worship, we simply do not feel that God accepts us. This sense of rejection makes it very hard for us to believe that he loves us, much less feel his love, and still less, want to worship him. The approach must then be to deal with sin before we attempt to come into worship. We search our hearts and humble ourselves before him. For it is only with repentance and submission that we experience the liberation of forgiveness. In these times of absolute surrender, his love and embracing presence once again becomes most palpable. Wave after wave of love from the Father’s heart is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, the comforter testifying to our inner man of his everlasting approval and unending salvation. In such a state, the heart cannot but worship him who first loved us. We fall to our knees in tears as the magnitude of his unending love overwhelms us. In that instance, we become a mirror of love, receiving his love and mirroring that love back to him. For that moment, we touch the heart of heaven.
The End of Worship – Our heart’s true home
The incredible thing about worship is that in worship, our heart finds its true home. Let me try to explain. Many of us struggle with the many and various aspects and facets of our lives. We play many roles, pursue many different things in each of these roles. Some of us are students, small group leaders, sons or daughters at the same time. Others are secular professionals, church leaders, fathers and mentors at the same time. Oftentimes we feel torn apart by these many roles that we play, trying to pursue different and sometimes contradictory objectives, trying to meet different and sometimes competing expectations. In short, we are “all over the place”, unsure of who we really are or what is really important. We are confused and disjointed. The incredible thing is that in worship, every disparate aspect of our lives comes together and coalesces into the singularity of purpose – the created in submission before his creator. All the different strands of our lives align like a compass towards the throne of God. For then, we realise that this was why we were created. We are not God. He is. Our entire being falls prostrate before His throne in recognition of His supremacy. In such worship, our heart finds it true rest and our soul its true home. There is no more inner conflict, no more confusion, no more strife. There is only God and we simply live for him. To enter the reality of worship is to enter into the heart of God and find our heart’s true home.