Worship Defined
I guess since I am writing about worship I should define the term worship.
These definitions will go from narrow and lacking some important parts to broad and accurate. Feel free to comment on these definitions.
Most Narrow-
That feeling you get when you are singing your favorite worship songs to God.
Less Narrow-
The Sunday Service.
Less Broad-
Any meeting with believers where the word is preached and songs are sung.
Most Broad-
Our lives, everything that we do is an act of worship.
Romans 12 talks about a life of worship where your body is offered as a living sacrifice in worship. Basically everything that you do, everything that you are should be an offering of worship. Worship is giving glory to God. Proclaiming his greatness, his power, his majesty. Everything that you do, if glory is given to God, is an act of worship. And why shouldn’t everything we do give glory to God? He is the creator of everything. He is a sovereign God in control of everything. Our worship of God should never cease, it should be a habit. Now I am bummed right now cause I can’t find the verse reference I wanted to use for the habit of praise bit. Well here is another that is just a good.
Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name. (Hebrews 13:15)
I’ll try to find that verse for a later post.
I am discovering that the “Books of the Law” are a description of the kind of absorption in our lives that God really desires. He wants, seeks, will be content with nothing less than involvement in every aspect of our lives, and our involvement with Him. In primitive cultures, everything that happens in, say, a village, is defined by the god that is worshiped and what that god is perceived to desire. e.g when crops are planted, who should marry whom, when a hunting trip should be planned, whether to go to war, the calendar, …everything in the culture is oriented on the basis of the god being worshiped. This is no less true of our worhsip of God. Everything in our lives points to who or what is being worshiped. The question is: What does my life demonstrate as my god?