Thursday, April 17, 2008

Beyond worship towards WORSHIP...

The word worship within Christianity has been scrunched down into a very narrow definition. Another side-effect of "religion." When Christians talk about it at all, they generally mean a scripted few minutes of church ceremony that revolves around congregational singing. Which can be part of the bigger picture of worshiping God but when we limit ourselves to this concept we rob ourselves of so much more. And this "small worship" can even be an uncomfortable experience for those of us who are not singers, or demonstrative, artistic people.

Worse, this narrow viewpoint inadvertently throws oil on the the fires of never-ending worship wars. Some folks like new music; some like old music; some like loud music; some like soft music; some like lots of music; some like very little music; some like instrumental music; some like easy-to-learn music; some like deep, thought provoking music; some like unexpected turns in the melody and harmonies; others don't. On and on it goes.

(...edited this section out - based on a particular video which youtube took down)

Frankly, when my heart is moved to worship, no one! and I mean NO ONE can prevent me from worshiping, and conversely when my heart is NOT ready to worship, no one! can push me into it.

Worshiping God in spirit and in truth, day by day, action by action, choice by choice, is such a huge thing, it actually hurts me to see it shrunken and mistreated this way.

I'll try to express more of what I'm getting at in other posts. Hopefully this post and won't just tick people off and cause even more "worship war" ...

Now, here's a video I discovered, featuring a young woman obviously singing about worship as a very real and personal experience - good job!:

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