Thoughts about Worship

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Thoughts about Worship

I was thinking today about how I approach God when it comes to asking for help in regards to our worship service. It suddenly hit me, I found it ironic that I was asking God to help me plan a worship service that I was essentially putting on for him. It feels almost like asking my wife to help me plan her surprise birthday party or something. It just didn’t seem totally right. Now let me quickly qualify that a worship gathering is also for others too and that one should never feel intimidated to seek out counsel from the Father. I just had this feeling though that a birthday party or an evening out with someone special is spurred on by feelings of adoration and love, so a time of worship should be the same.

I remember when I was dating my wife I had all this creativity cruising around in my mind as to things I could plan for us to do. Sometimes it was extravagant and other times it was just fun and simple. Either way I found that the adoration for her fed my creativity like fuel to a fire. Conversely, whenever a relationship is stagnant, creativity seems very hard to come by too. So there it is, the parallels are pretty clear. I find that the more time I spend with my father the more I just find myself captivated by him. My worship planning should start there.

I wonder if I get too caught up with trying to create a worship service for everyone only to frustrate myself with a feeling of not feeling like it was good enough. I suppose it makes sense in that if I’m trying to please people by picking good songs than I won’t ever really feel like I accomplised the goal of whole heartedly worshipping God. That is the goal–to worship God. We should call it “A time to sing songs” if it is not and stop calling it “worship”. The songs are really for him. Every week I decide to put a songlist together so me and my friends can come together and sing our hearts out to him. To worship our best friend. Our Father. Our Help and Strength.

That changes my motivations in a major way. It’s our job as a worship team to lead people into a time of adoration and praise. Although the spiritual climate of the audience is important, as a worship team we may want to start with our whole perspective on the method in which we are approaching God during our worship times first and then focus on the congregation. I remember the night I serenaded my wife for the first time. I was nervous but didn’t care because having her understand how I felt was more important than my fear. I sang her a song that I wrote. The result? Well she was happy. She was moved! She showered me with joy and praise.

That same feeling has happened to me when I have been alone serenading the father. It’s in those moments that I tell him how much I love him. How much he means to me. I accompany the first words that come from my heart with the sounds of my guitar. It never fails but I always leave feeling like he showered me with his joy and blessings. Maybe I moved him too. Maybe while I sang and played he harmonized with me. Maybe he clapped his hands and sang a song over me. Maybe he danced while I played…either way I leave feeling like, “that was a time of worship”.

In closing, we have so many ways we can structure a worship team and a worship time. Believe me I have seen so many different models. And yes, we will have one for ourselves too that is unique to our group. However, my heart is to have a worship team that does just that, worship. The other night at practice we were working on the song “Amazed” by the time we were done, I looked over at Evette and Emily and Emily replied something to the extent of “I just want to keep going…” There was this feeling that we had momentarily forgotten about practice and just got lost in worship. Whomp there it is.