God's Song: How God WANTS Worship

Good morning and welcome once again to worship. I also want to acknowledge and recognize those who have joined us on Facebook live and through the recorded sermon later on. I want to say, thank you for checking in and joining us for this discussion this morning. We are in worship and we spend every Sunday, or nearly every Sunday together here. So I want to ask a few pointed questions this morning, some of them will not have a specific answers but others will. Some, you might not be able to answer for yourself or some questions may merely be designed to make you think. Before we get to them this morning, I want to spend just a brief moment introducing what we are going to contemplate today...

As many of you know, we recently completed a program sponsored by the Conference designed to help us assess who we are and where we want to go as a family of faith together. As a result of that program, we are doing some things differently inside of worship, whether you recognize that or not, and we are doing a lot of things outside of worship to help us become a healthy and vital worshiping community. Now for our first question...how many times have you heard me say the word, “Worship” or its derivation already this morning? If you have paid attention, I have said it at least a half a dozen times. We are in worship and this is the place that we do that the most. And that leads me to our second question...

Where do we truly worship God?

For some of us, the worship process happens only within these four walls. But, I want to challenge us to think about how our worship of God may happen in many different places and many different ways. For some of us, worship happens everywhere that we give our hearts over to the experience of God in the moment. For some of us, worship happens when we are walking in nature. For others, that worship happens only when we engage our full bodies. The point of what I am saying here is that we need to understand that worship is not the same for everyone. So, as we gather here on a Sunday morning, the whole service may speak into some of our hearts completely, but for others, the opposite is true. For those who do not truly connect to the worship service, we need to understand that formal worship is not how they connect with God. This is why some folks are not with us on a Sunday morning. We are not all the same and neither is the way we connect with God…so that leads me to our next question...

With what part of the service do you connect?

Allow a few moments for answers...Now, I want to ask you another question...

To whom do you think worship should be directed?

I ask this question because I just asked you a very loaded and leading question…I asked you specifically what pieces of the worship service you connect with for a very specific reason. This question, the question of to whom worship should be directed is something I believe we, meaning all Christians and churches, really need to assess. You see, according to scripture, worship belongs to God, not us! Let me say that again…God is the one that should be worshiped, not our personal needs.

When we lose sight of the fact that worship is about God and not us, we lose sight of what we are here to do. We are not here to serve our needs but the needs of God. So, that brings me to our Psalm for this morning because God tells us exactly how we are to worship and what we are to do within our worship. So, let’s look at a few verses together to see what God expects from our worship...

Psalm 100:2 NIV

Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.

So, let me ask you, what does this mean to us? How do we do this? Do we do this?

When we think about singing joyful songs, I am sure some of us think of our historical and traditional hymns. However, I know that there are just as many of us who would rather sing songs that are more modern. In my mind, singing with joy is about being present with the song that we are singing, not necessarily the song itself and I am not referencing just the words or just the tune, but rather, singing the words with our whole hearts. When we merely sing a song without feeling it in our hearts, can we truly singing with joy? For those of us who really connect with the traditional hymns, it is probably both the words and the tune that we connect with. There is just something about the tune that helps us connect with a moment or a memory that we might hold dear. On the flip side though, for some of us, the traditional songs we often sing might have lost their meaning in our hearts. Just like other elements of our worship, when we do them so often, I have to wonder if they have lost some of their meaning for us because they have become a habit and the meaning then is diminished. Another thought to consider is that there might even be some of us, who would really like to move around when we sing our hymns but that is not what we traditionally do. Just understand that some folks just do not connect with traditional music. Does that mean that we ignore them and exclude them because they are not connected? My answer is emphatically “NO”. While we cannot design or imagine worship that does not include some elements, sometimes we need to let go our our needs and focus on what it is that others might need to feel connected with God. With me?

Notice, I have not even mentioned the first part of that verse which speaks about worshiping with gladness…the same things can be said about worship as a whole as I just mentioned about the songs we sing. I have to admit and be perfectly honest, it is often hard to worship with gladness when we face negativity in every other aspect of our lives, right?

For me, it is hard to worship if my heart is not really in it. I am sure you all know when I am not fully here…for me it’s really easy to see. I wear my heart on my sleeve but I come here every Sunday looking for something coming back from you, to help me feel God’s heart within our worship services just as much as you look to me to give that to you. If we are not fully here, we need to answer the question of what is pulling us away from God’s heart…I am not looking for an answer but it is something that we must all answer and look deep within our hearts to find. This time in worship is about connecting with God just enough to get us through our week until we are together again. I find that, in today’s world, it so easy to be drawn away from God in every moment of the day, but that is not what God desires from us or even for us. So listen to this...

Psalm 100:3–4 NIV

Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.

Listen to that again…God desires for us to praise Him for what He is to us. Now, if the world and others have pulled us away from that joy in our hearts, and I am talking about the kind of joy that can only come from being in God’s presence, then I feel that we need to truly assess what it is that is drawing us out of reverence for God and find the way to feel that joy and love. All throughout scripture, we are reminded that God loves us and that we belong to God. It is hard to deny that when we hear it but I get it, it is so easy to fall into the world and just want to go and hide from everything, including God, especially when we feel like we are all alone in our journey.

But hear these words and hold onto them…God made us, WE are God’s own. Twice in those two short verses, we are reminded that we belong to God. So, why do we so easily forget that fact? To be honest, the world pulls us away. That means that our challenge, every single day of our lives, is to figure out how to stay connected to God in every moment. And most days for me, that is a real challenge, but it is what God desires…and we know that from the very last verse of the Psalm...

Psalm 100:5 NIV

For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.

Here’s the ultimate thing…God’s love endures forever and God’s faithfulness has never left us. No matter how much we do not connect or move away from God in our daily lives, God stands beside us. I know I have hammered this point so many times here in worship but the fact remains, God does still speak to us. The question is are we listening?

And I think this is truly at the heart of all that we are to do to worship God. We need to be open to God. Our worship will be ever changing and ever evolving. As we continue to look at ways that we can enhance our worship and help those who may not connect with our very traditional worship to connect to God through what we do, we need to always be open to the ways that God directs us. So, when things change in our worship, especially when it is something that you might really connect with, we need to remember that worship is not about us but about how God desires for us to connect with Him...

Let us pray...

Gracious and loving God, help us to see that worship is not about our own desires but your desire to be connected to us. When we are disconnected, draw us in through our worship so that we can re-connect with you. It is not about us but about you, so remind us daily that we belong to you. Amen.