I give my all to You

Sunday, September 02, 2007

A worship service is not a local automative station

I've just started reading a book on worship by Dan Kimball titled "Emerging Worship: Creating New Worship Gathering for New Generations", and a number of paragraphs he wrote in the book about what a worship service is not got me thinking.

"We usually call the weekend time when a church family gets together a 'worship service'. Ironically, this term used to mean a time when the saints of God all meet to offer their service to God through worship and their service to others in the church. Over time, however, the title has slowly reversed. The weekend worship 'service' has become the time of the week when we go to a church building much like a car goes to an automobile service station.

Most people view the weekend worship service as a place where we go to get service done to us by 'getting our tanks filled up' at the service station. It's a place where someone will give a sermon and serve us with our weekly sustenance. In automobile terms, you could say it is our weekly fill-up. We come to our service station to have a song leader serve us by leading us in singing songs. All so we can feel good when we emotionally connect through mass singing and feel secure that we did 'worship'.

...we need to recognise that going to a worship service is not about us, the worshippers. It is not about God's service to us. It is purely our offering of service and worship to God...

In the New Testament, the English word 'service' is used to speak of an act of giving, not receiving. Paul spoke of his ministry by saying, 'therefore I glory in Christ Jesus in my service to God' (Rom 15:17). Paul talked frequently about his 'service' to the saints, which meant Paul was serving them.

Nevertheless, the 'worship service', where the focus is supposed to be us bringing our services to God by worshipping Him, has been subtly changed to focus more on us getting served by going to the meeting."

It got me thinking about how I myself view worship. I'm sad to say that I often do see worship as a time for me to be refreshed and renewed by God. This isn't a bad thing, but I realise I've sort of lost the true purpose of worship. It's all about God, not me. It's about giving Him praise, worshipping Him, and giving my life to Him even though I'm tired, weak, or in need of refreshment by the Holy Spirit. It's about lifting His Name high up like a banner over my head, despite what may have happened in my life at that point in time. It's about declaring that He indeed is Lord of all, Majesty, Jehovah. It's about thanking Him for being who He is, for being so faithful, so loving, so gracious, so merciful. How could I have forgotten all that and focused, instead, on myself and what I needed? Lord, I pray that You'll change my heart, change my attitude towards worshipping You. Help me to worship You the way You first intended all of us to worship. Thank You for reminding me that it's not about me, but it's all about You. I pray too that everyone in Your churches all over the world will be reminded of this too. Amen.