Worship =

Ok, so I have been hoping that at some point during this 40 days that I would be able to bring you some words of wisdom. Some things that God had revealed to me. Well, I have something.

So, long story short I decide to start at the beginning of the Bible, Genesis 1:1, In the Beginning….. One of my goals in doing this was to document as many forms of worship as I could find with the goal being to demonstrate  that what we tend to call worship today is very limited

So, as I read I noticed that the phrase, “called upon the name of the Lord” kept coming up again and again. So, I began to wonder what that was about. As I looked at the cross references I landed on Psalms 116:17, which says, “I will offer to the the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the Lord.”(KJV) For me this confirmed that to “call upon the name of the Lord” was to worship him, even as much as to give sacrifice was to worship. Then, I thought hey, animal sacrifice was a very common form of worship in the Old Testament. Jesus’ death and resurrection eliminated the need for this. However, what better way to worship then to sacrifice. So, to start down that path I grabbed my dictionary and began to look up sacrifice. Then I said to my self, “Self” how can I understand the relationship between sacrifice and worship until I understand what worship means. So, I turned to “worship” in my dictionary.  and this is what I found……

The American Heritage Dictionary defines worship first as a noun: 1a)Reverent love and devotion for a deity or sacred object 1b)The ceremonies or prayers by which this love is expressed. 2.)Ardent devotion; adoration… Then as a verb: 1.) To honor and love as a deity 2.)to love devotedly 3.) to participate in religious worship.

So, even by today’s modern standards this sounds like more then just music. Considering this I began to think of this in terms of my love for my family. When we sing we tell God how much we love him. This is important; in the same way that it is important that I tell my wife and my son that I love them. However, the way I live should show them that I love them. Sometimes when my wife tells me she loves me, I will tease her by responding, “I know.” While I am only teasing her, the truth is that she lives her life in such a way that I do know that she loves me, even before she says it. In the same way, how we live should show God that we love Him. Are we telling God how much we love him on Sunday mornings then living a life that says differently. Does our life show “reverent love and devotion” to God. Do we daily display “ardent devotion” to Him through our actions?

To take this a step further I looked up ardent so as to understand what “ardent devotion” meant. Ardent is defined as being: 1.) characterized by warmth of feeling; passionate. 2a.) Burning; fiery. 2b.)Glowing; shining.

So are we living a life that shows a burning; fiery devotion to God. Or are we just telling him “I love you as big a the sky, which by the way you created and I think you are sooooo awesome for having created it,” and calling ourselves worshippers.

So, now a challenge for you (and for me). The challenge is to live a life that shows how much you love God. Live a life that shows “burning; fiery” devotion to God. Live a life that shows “glowing; shining” devotion. Do this so that when we go to church on Sunday and tell God how much we love him through our singing and music, then we might here Him respond with a smile, “I know.”

I think this may start a series where I take the definition of worship that I gave above and dive deeper and deeper into it. If you are interested stay tuned, you can learn with me and hopefully we will grow together as well.

This entry was posted on March 14, 2008 at 02:52 and is filed under Thoughts on Things. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

| Print