Worship The Way He Wants
How should we approach God in worship? If not careful, our worship can become focused around human preference rather than God’s preferences - and indeed He has preferences.
On one end of the spectrum, there are those who consider drums and electric guitars in worship to be a form of blasphemy - citing how drums sync the beat of our hearts to the devil’s drums (I’ve been legitimately accused of that one). On the other end, you’ll have those who eye-roll and yawn if the song isn’t off the newest hit album from one of the popular worship movements - and they’ll cite the verse about singing a new song (seen that one too quite a bit). Then there’s a whole host of in-between on that spectrum.
To clarify first of all, worship is not just the action of singing songs. Singing songs is just a vehicle by which we express our worship. When we hear that word, we think in terms of the instruments used, or the genre, or the decibel level, but rather we should be thinking about something entirely different. So when the body does gather, and we do sing songs, what kind of worship does God require?
Authentic Worship. Jesus scorched the hypocrites of his day by saying, “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me” (Matt. 15:8). True worship comes from our heart, not just our mouth. He wants truly saved believers in Christ to worship Him authentically. This means for the true believer that we should be constantly pursuing a life of holiness and bearing fruit by keeping with repentance.
Attentive Worship. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind” (Luke 10:27). You shall “search after him with all your heart and with all your soul” (Deut. 4:29). No halfhearted affections. Sunday only Christians, put simply, aren’t Christians. We know this because Jesus said to the church at Laodicea, “Because you are lukewarm...I will spit you out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:16).
Accurate Worship. Jesus spoke of when His church would worship God in a way like never before when He said, “But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.” If we say we love Jesus but don’t care about true, deep, Biblical teaching and understanding, we don’t really love Jesus like we think. Instead, we love the idea of eternal life and will embrace a simple veneer of Jesus to have it. In the same way, if the songs we sing are filled with error or lead to error, will a holy and righteous God who is perfectly committed to His truth accept it just because of how they make us feel?
Scripture makes it clear that we cannot just approach God on whatever terms we want and it will be acceptable. I believe that He gives leeway, and is even blessed by various styles and instrumentation given that it’s not contradicting His standards set in scripture. It appears that God is deeply and eternally concerned with the lyrical content that we dwell upon as His church and heart posture of the worshipper.
If the focus and hope is in the style of music itself whether new, old, loud, soft, cool, lame, etc., the boat has been hopelessly missed, and that’s some cold, deep water. We are to focus on God. It’s not just heart and feelings with no commitment to truth - that would be not knowing the God we ought to know. It’s also not just hard facts with no Bibilcally centered joy or emotion toward the glory and gift of God. Both extremes are of the flesh. Both are human preferences. We need humble and loving hearts that hunger for the beautiful knowledge and understanding of God.
Spirit & truth.
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“Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe” Hebrews 12:28
