One of the places on my personal bucket list is Yellowstone
National Park. Did you know that Yellowstone
National Park is the first and oldest national park in the world. It can be
seen from space! The park is in three states and covers 3,400 square miles (2.2
million acres). It’s known for incredible beauty and amazing geological
features such as Old Faithful geyser. But my friends that have been there often
tell me that the landscape now is entirely different now than it was in 1988. That year, a forest fire larger than any in
history swept through… it destroyed everything.
It consumed trees that were designed to survive fires. It was a consuming fire.
The book of Hebrews tells us that our GOD is a consuming fire, and says that
that quality is what should define our worship: “Let us be thankful, and so worship God
acceptably with reverence and awe, for our “God is a consuming fire.”
I'm deeply concerned about what worship is for worship leaders, but that makes me think about worship in general, too. It isn’t about us, but
different aspects of worship appeal naturally to different kinds of people. We need to listen for God’s voice as we worship and let him
convict us and challenge us. But what does it mean to truly enter into worship as a community
without boundaries.
I think that beyond all else, worship is community
agreeing together to love Jesus… to fall in love with him, even.
Remember falling in love? Head-over-heels, desperately desiring to be
near that person? It’s a little like
that consuming fire, isn’t it?
Falling in love changes our focus – we
are no longer concerned with ourselves focused only on our beloved – and our
incredible joy and gratitude that he or she loves us also…
Worship is a celebration of this kind of love, a joyful focus on
loving the God that first loved us. Worship
is not about music, or the sermon, or standing up and sitting down at the right
times, or boredom or banners – it’s about something so much bigger we can’t
wrap our brains around it. We are a
manifestation of the entire people of God worshipping right now before the
throne – when we begin to perceive this, there are a thousand reasons to
rejoice, to praise, to sing – and to renounce flippancy, selfishness,
superficiality, and going-through-the-motions.
We rejoice because we are beloved, and we respond in love.
Before the God who is a consuming fire, we don’t go through the
motions and think about the next thing when we get this over with and go
home. We don’t demand our artistic
preferences. We don’t just gather
with our friends. We don’t just
sing together. We enter into the
presence of God. The holy of
holies. THIS is the nature of the
church, the reality. And when we start
singing we join in a glorious worship that takes place unceasingly before the
throne of God. This is incredible!! Imagine it!!
When King David danced in front of the Ark it was not
a public display – it was a simple response to the greatness of God and what
God had done in David’s life. David was
consumed with awe and JOY and because his focus was on God, he had total peace
with his worship—even when it made his wife uncomfortable – if you’re up on
your feet it shouldn’t be because you want to impress the person next to you
and if you’re sitting in your seat it shouldn’t be because that’s how you were
raised and that’s what’s expected… Worship
isn’t like that, it’s entire focus is off of self and off of others and instead
on God.
The priorities of worship are even shown
in the Hebrew and Greek words that are translated as “worship.” It comes from three word groups: First “bowing down,” This stresses submission. Bowing down before God is making a conscious
statement to God that he is in control of all things that relate to my life. Second, “Service, or Obedience” Now that I’ve submitted, I’m responsible to
fulfill the wishes of the one I worship.
Romans 12:1 “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to
offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your
spiritual act of worship.” Our daily
living should be a sacrifice – true worship is a lifestyle, not a moment.
All of life reflects our worship of God. Third, “Remember.” There are amazing promises for people in
worship. We eagerly look forward to what
has already been accomplished. We need
to daily, hourly, moment-by-moment remember our covenant with God and what Christ
has done for us.
Once we are looking at worship with
these internal mindsets, it no longer has boundaries of time or geography. It connects us to worship in a community that
we experience through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in each of us. The spirit unites believers into a single
people, a family of brothers and sisters in Christ. At one level members of a church function as
a community – but at a higher level the spirit connects all believers, both as
individuals and small communities, to others everywhere. Through the spirit there are not only no
geographical boundaries but also a bond between saints that have been divided
from our community by death and those that are still living on Earth.
Worship is ongoing and eternal; our highest calling, the reason
for our existence. We were created to
honor and glorify God! And one of the
beautiful things about a community of believers such as this one is that it is
a visible manifestation of the entire people of God for all time. We are part of the residents of Heaven who
are worshipping before the throne of God right now. This doesn't start at an hour of the clock – We
need to lose the beginning and end to worship mindset and remember that this is
only the time that we agree as a community to join the saints in Heaven
together and celebrate all the unique ways that we worship our God. This is the time we set aside to participate
in the ongoing and eternal party.
Make no mistake, that word “participation” is an important one. I don’t believe that God wants us to be a
wallflower or a voyeur or especially someone who is going through the
motions. We need to be careful
here. We need to approach with awe and
respect. Do we?
Is God interested in us showing up to look at
worship? I don’t think so. When we gather to enjoy musicians serenading
us, or to watch cleverly done videos or to be entertained by a public speaker
and then refer to this passive, non-participatory experience as “worship,” a
shift has occurred, something vital has been lost.
We’re more used to being voyeuristic than truly participatory, of
course… Think of “American Idol” or “So You Think You Can Dance.”
You don’t learn to dance or sing by watching these programs any
more than you learn to worship by watching.
You are not a singer or a dancer if you watch them, even if you’re
invited to vote – and that’s like deciding who your favorite singer on the worship team or in the choir is!
Now just in case you’re looking at your neighbor just now instead
of at yourself, remember there is no way to tell on the outside if someone is
worshipping authentically or has their heart focused somewhere other than on
God.
Someone who seems entirely uninvolved in worship may have an
inner heart-set that is beautiful to the king, and someone that seems on the
opposite pole and is dancing and singing with arms raised may be joyfully and
exuberantly glorifying God or only putting on a display.
This is not about style of worship – but it is about our hearts,
and we know our hearts, and we can see the fruit that comes out of them.
In the book of Revelation, we see John’s vision of worship in
Heaven – there are 24 elders who lay their crowns down at feet of Jesus. To me, one of the most beautiful things about
this moment is that they and the other living creatures that worship before the
throne are all different and unique, yet they are a community of
worshippers. We celebrate our individual
uniqueness when we worship together as the body of Christ. When our focus is on loving Jesus, our
differences fall away as unimportant.
But what about when we walk out of this place? Go home and eat lunch, watch football, go to
work?
The worship continues in Heaven and it can continue in this
community as well. When our lives are an
act of worship it transcends these walls and enters into anything and
everything we do. Nothing is trivial
because the God who created us is not trivial.
Psalm
86:12 says
“I
will praise you, O Lord my God, with all my heart; I will glorify your name
forever.”
We
cannot truly worship in part, or only for an hour on Sunday morning. As the psalmist writes, joyful praise is with
our whole heart. It consumes our
lives. Does that sound hard? I ask you again, remember falling in
love? How hard is it to think about
them? More like, how incredibly hard is
it NOT to? And the more time we spend
with Jesus, the more we will fall in love.
We
don’t worship alone. We don’t even
worship bound by these walls or bound by time.
We don’t worship based on our present circumstances and we don’t worship
based on what we can see with our eyes.
But what I find most exciting about true worship without boundaries and
what it all means is that we are worshipping as part of a kingdom that is
happening now yet is part of our future.
We rejoice in what has already been accomplished even as we are part of
how it is all working out.
We
have a promise of worship at the end of history from the book of
Revelation:
Rev.
21:26 I did not see a
temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The
city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God
gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations
will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor
into it. On
no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The
glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it.
What we do as a people of God anticipates
the future unity of God’s people in the age to come. To worship together is to radically claim a
future in which unity is evidence of Jesus’ rule in all of us and God’s
promises through him.
John 17:21-23
“…that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.
May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory
that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May
they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and
have loved them even as you have loved me.”
