Today I am meeting with the young adults group here at our church to talk through vision for leading worship. I wrote down some quick thoughts and thought I would post them here as well.
In John 4, Jesus said that true worshippers will worship the Father in "spirit and truth". This implies that we have to know what is true about God in order to know how to worship him in the way that he desires. This speaks to the primacy of the Bible teacher. These men are really the lead worshippers as we respond to what they bring in presenting God's truth in revelation.
James Montgomery Boice said, “To worship God we must know who God is, but we cannot know who God is unless God first chooses to reveal himself to us. God has done this in the Bible, which is why the Bible and the teaching of the Bible need to be central in our worship.” (Give Praise to God, opening page)
My passion for worship at DSC would be that people would be living lives that completely correspond to what God’s desires for us are. Thus worship = obedience.
I don’t really care that much about what form our worship takes on Sundays, I have my preferences for sure, but the primary emphasis should be our lives and not our expressions or responses for one hour on Sunday morning or Thursday night.
I don’t really care if peoples hands are raised on Sunday morning expressing surrender or emotion, if those hands go home and smack their kids around in unjust and arbitrary punishment.
My passion for DSC worship is that our people would live lives of obedience and be God filled, showing a passion for the blessing of obedience and then have that overflow into adoration, praise and surrender in our times together in worship through song, listening and loving on Sunday mornings.
The first question is not, what does Sunday morning look like – if we are taking care of the “during the week” lifestyle, Sunday morning will in a sense take care of itself. The bigger question for all of us is, how do we cultivate obedience in our heart and the hearts of our people?
3 comments:
Zach... good thoughts. This is a good place to start. This idea seems to come right from Romans 12:1-3.
It's hard to fault the idea that worship=obedience, but it can feel a bit 2-dimensional to rest your theology of worship on this axiom.
One break-down that immediately comes to mind would be the issue of God's glory in suffering, disobedience, or even damnation. I believe God is glorified even in these circumstances.
OK, maybe I'm misinterpreting a bit. All this to say, I like what you've got to say and pray blessings for you in your new ministry.
See you this weekend....
Good luck in ABQ Zach. Looking forward to meeting ya in the flesh this weekend.
Here is some stuff I taught on Jesus use of "spirit and truth" in John (all apologies to Don Whitney, DA Carson, and Gary Burge).
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Because God is spirit we worship him in the spiritual realm – the spiritual realm is contrast in this passage with a Samaritan women’s understanding that what really mattered was the physical location. She thought worship was constrained to either the Jerusalem Temple or Mount Gerizim – she wanted an answer. The answer she got in these verses is that proper worship of God is a matter of spirit rather than physical location. This is worship not tied to holy places but impacted by a holy Person – Jesus Christ. It occurs anywhere we focus on and respond to God.
The phrase “spirit and truth” refers not to two, but to one inseparable concept. It is at its essence God-centered, made possible by the gift of the Holy Spirit, and in personal knowledge of and conformity to God’s Word-made-flesh, Jesus Christ, the one who is God’s truth (Carson, 225). This is worship empowered by God but also informed by the revelation of God and provided to humans by the One who is the truth, Jesus Christ (Burge, 147). There can be no true worship of God apart from approaching the Father, through Jesus Christ, by the Holy Spirit.
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