Some people are observers. Some emulate
what they see. Few are true worshippers. So few that most of us
assume they’re faking it. Because we’re faking it. And we wish
they’d just sit down. Whish they’d just shut up. But, true
worship is about none of those things. It’s not about the hand
raising or the crying or the music or any of that.
True worship is simply about letting go.
Reason 4: Insincere Worship
Nobody can teach you how to worship. I mean, the mechanics of
it. You can go to all the seminars, read all the books, watch
all the videos you like. At the end of the day, worship is a
personal experience, one difficult to quantify and to describe.
There isn’t necessarily a right or wrong way to do it, and we
should never feel coerced into following someone else’s pattern.
A lot of people become uneasy when we start talking about
worship. For many, the word “worship” conjures up the new
standard of forcing everyone to their feet while the praise team
sings for half an hour and we’re forced to clap our hands or
raise our hands or whatever. This is a severe hindrance to
church growth: false worship. Few churches teach, in Sunday
service, what worship is and what it’s not. The worship leaders
just do it—rehearsed band sets of worship music—without sharing
with the seeker what that experience means and how it is
properly done. As a result, the seeker kind of emulates what he
or she sees around them—either the quiet reflection of white
conservative churches or the thunder and hollering of black
churches. Neither extreme is correct and neither has anything at
all to do with worship.
Worship is not about a set of aerobic instructions. We see a lot
of people raise their hands to worship God, but raising our
hands is not what worship is about. Worship is about what’s
going on inside, about your communion with God. We commune with
God through our relationship with His Son, Jesus Christ [John
14:6] by way of the Ministry of the Holy Spirit [Romans 8:26].
For many of us, the words “Holy Spirit” conjures up images of
yelling and sweating and running around speaking in tongues. The
Holy Spirit is a Person, possibly the most misunderstood
Christian doctrine. Far too many of us do not understand Who the
Holy Spirit is because far too few of our churches preach about
Him or even invoke His presence in their services. Preachers
[pray these long, overblown, hollering invocations, praying for
our marching men overseas, the sick and the shut-in, the pastor,
poor little hungry children and much more. That’s not what the
invocation is for. The invocation serves only one purpose: to
invite the presence of the Holy Spirit, to beseech Him (the Holy
Spirit is a “Him,” not an “It”). But, too often, our preachers
forget, during the invocation, to actually invoke anything.
They’re just hollering, their chance to get in the mic. None of
which magnifies or pleases God, which is why God isn’t moving in
your service, why your people don’t worship, why they aren't
being delivered, and why your church
isn’t growing: the clowning going on in your pulpit.
Worship begins at home.
It really does. You worship God by honoring Him. You honor God
not with your lips or even with your heart (a phrase which tends
to confuse people but those same people are usually too afraid
to ask what it means). You honor God with your actions. With the
things you do and with your motives for doing them. Even a
flawed Christian who has the right motives is closer to God than
the most pious Christian whose reason for living a pious life is
so he can lord it over others or attain some goal. Pastors who
live clean lives because they’re afraid of losing their jobs if
they are caught in a scandal are doing the right thing for the
wrong reason. With God, both the thing and the reason have to
line up. It’s not enough for you to do good, or to even be
good. You have to have a right motive for those choices, as God
responds to our motives, not what we do or say.
It is useless to praise God in the church house if you live like
the devil everywhere else. I’d guess three-quarters of that
singing and crying and falling out is all phony, false worship
conducted by people who may be earnest in their going through
the motions but who, nevertheless, do not worship God in their
daily lives. Worship is an offering, like money or like burning
the flesh of animals [Matthew 15:8-9]. Making a sacrifice to God
is an utterly useless gesture if your life is all about you. If
your testimony is jacked up. See, your Christian conduct—what we
call, your “testimony”—is like a credit score. Your
effectiveness to God is based on how you conduct yourself. You
worship God by your daily walk, by how you life your life and by
Whose qualities you represent. When your children go to school
and start cussing like sailors and screwing in the stairwells,
that reflects badly on you as a parent. Similarly, we embarrass
or “grieve” the Holy Spirit when we conduct ourselves in ways
that dishonor God. If we really know God, the Holy Spirit kicks
us in the privates—kicking our conscience into high gear and
making us feel bad about acting like a moron. This consciousness
of sin is what pastors mean about the Holy Spirit “convicting”
us of something. As Christians, we should get a little zing
every time we act like a moron. That little “zing” is the
function—the office—of the Holy Spirit.
