In this post, Trent Berry, our worship pastor, shares some great thoughts about what it means to truly worship Jesus. We are blessed to have Trent on our staff, and I hope you’ll allow his words below to challenge you in the area of worship.
“What is worship?” you may ask. That question can be answered simply looking back to the origin of the word. The term worship comes from the Old English word weorthscipe (worth-ship), literally meaning to put worth in something. If you Google worship the definition comes back as “the feeling or expression of reverence and adoration for a deity.”
So now that we know the definition of the word, we need to know how to apply that to our faith in worshiping God. Louie Giglio, the lead pastor at Passion City Church, once said “worship is our response, both personally and corporate, to God for who He is and what He has done, expressed in and by the things we say and the way we live.” We put worth in God for what he has done and for who He is. Worship is achieved by the things we say and the daily choices we make as we live our lives. A few examples may be declaring God’s glory, naming Christ as Lord of our lives, or by simply deciding to do the right thing in a tough situation that will bring glory to God. With every decision we make we have the opportunity to worship.
Sometimes the thing we decide to worship may not be God, though. We can worship money, our job, celebrities, and many other things of this Earth. Even though it is easy to do these things, we have to remember that the only one deserving of our worship is the Lord our God.
When we decide to worship, we cannot just do so because of the things God is doing in our lives. If that is the case, you will be disappointed. God does not always grant our wishes like a genie in a bottle you may have dreamed of. God does as he pleases because He has a greater plan for us than we can imagine or even wrap our minds around. Because of this inability to fit His plans inside of our minds, we will sometimes find ourselves as sinners either saddened, disappointed, or even angered by God. Yes, I said angry. It is okay. We are all humans who sin and sometimes that sin causes anger and frustration that we may take out on God even if we don’t realize it. We as sinners are imperfect and always changing as we grow in our faith, but God is never changing and always true.
When we decide to worship God for who He is, we will always have a well of worship to give back to God. His love never fails and His mercies are new every single morning. Who He is alone is enough reason to worship Him. So on days where we feel abandoned or lost, we can still lift up the name of God our Father in worship through our words and our actions.
