Humanity has been worshiping God from the beginning of time. But almost just as soon as our earliest ancestors began to worship in the Garden of Eden, they misplaced their worship. And sadly, we are still plagued by the same problem today.
This leads to all kinds of misunderstandings about worship. Because of those misunderstandings, it is often helpful to take a look at the basics of what worship actually is.
The word “worship” means to essentially respond to something by ascribing or declaring its worth.
Although we normally talk about worship in terms of honoring or revering a deity (or at least something we think is a deity), we could appropriately use the term to describe how we treat anything or anyone that we deem is worthy of our ultimate reverence, honor, or devotion (whether that is the God of the universe, an idol carved out of wood, or a celebrity).
What we worship is what we pursue and love the most. I like to think of it like this: we only have space on the throne of our hearts for one god.
That is why Jesus said in Luke 16:13 that we cannot “serve God and money” — or really God and anything else. It is not within our human capacity to be fully devoted to or worship two competing gods.
So, if God is the focal point of our worship, how then do we worship him? The simple, comprehensive answer is this: we worship God in every way.
By that, I mean that the words we say, the actions we take, and even the attitudes we exhibit are all mediums or avenues for us to worship God.
This is why Jesus also said that our ultimate calling and instruction in life is to love God with all of your “heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind…” (Luke 10:27).
And this is what Paul meant when he said, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).
More specifically, Scripture shows us that our words, actions, and attitudes are worship to God when they have been self-sacrificially devoted to him.
Paul explains in Romans 12:1 that our fundamental spiritual worship consists of us responding to God’s grace and mercy by presenting our whole self as a “living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.”
As one author explains, "True worshipers want to make much of Christ" because true worship "displays" the greatness of God and does not "distract" from it. And that is because true worship, simply speaking, is focused on God and not on us as we worship.
This is the fundamental problem behind misplaced, misguided, or inappropriate worship: the focus is wrong.
And as Jesus told the woman from Samaria that he met at the well in John 4:23, “…true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.”
But worship is not just an abstract idea or ideological construct; when we worship God with our words, actions, and attitudes, it will result in some kind of expression — just like enjoying good food, music, or athleticism always results in some sort of expressions of appreciation and even happiness (such as smiling or cheering).
The Book of Psalms lists nine expressions that we make in worship in response to God. One of the most common of these is singing and making music, which we see throughout humanity’s history in the Bible.
The Old Testament gives us a pretty good idea of how worship music was conducted before Jesus, but the New Testament is relatively silent on style or instrumentation during the time of Jesus and the First Church, which is why the Church has had such a variety of music over the last 2,000 years and still does today.
More important than our expressions is the position of our hearts in our worship. Just like Adam and Eve turned their focus on themselves in their worship, setting the sinful standard for everyone to follow, we can easily become self-centered in our own worship and start elevating our own preferences, opinions, and comfortabilities over God's desires and commands.
And just like Aaron led the Israelites to melt down their jewelry into an idol to worship, we are easily swayed by our lusts to replace God with something temporal, worldly, and less significant as the center of our worship.
And as John wrote: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world — the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life — is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:15-17).
Every time in Scripture that people came face-to-face with the beauty and glory of God, they responded in worshipful physical expressions that communicate vertically to God, and horizontally to others — and it is still the same today.
Conversely, someone that responds to God by being stoic, unmoved, and expressionless is simply not seeing God. Their eyes are either blinded to the supremacy and magnificence of God by sin or they are too focused on another kind of idol that they have replaced God with.
That is the feeling we get from Romans 1 when Paul describes people that are not worshiping God.
[God’s] invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen” (Romans 1:18-25).
How well we worship God is important to get right for many reasons, but especially because that is what we will be doing one day after we die and appear before him.
Paul wrote in Philippians 2:10-11 that “…at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
God is seeking people today who will worship him in spirit and in truth. Will we be the kind of worshiper that God is looking for?
For further reading:
Why Do Christians Sing Praise and Worship Songs?
What Is the Difference Between Veneration and Worship?
How Does God Want Us to Express Ourselves in Worship?
Why Do We Raise Our Hands in Worship?
Photo Credit: ©iStock/Getty Images Plus/Tinnakorn Jorruang