It only takes a short reading of Scripture before discovering that we are not only commanded to worship God, but we were actually created to worship Him.
But worship is not just singing in a church service as we commonly think (although it includes that), worshiping God is more of a lifestyle because of how much it involves.
What Is the Significance of Worship?
This kind of all-encompassing worship is most appropriate because God (and God alone) is worthy of our worship.
A beautiful hymn from Terry York and Mark Blankenship produced in 1988 paints a poetic picture of God's worthiness:
Worthy of worship, worthy of praise; Worthy of honor and glory; Worthy of all the glad songs we can sing; Worthy of all the offerings we bring;
Worthy of reverence, worthy of fear; Worthy of love and devotion; Worthy of bowing and bending of knees; Worthy of all this and added to these
Then the chorus directs our attention to God with these words:
You are worthy, Father, Creator You are worthy, Savior, Sustainer You are worthy, worthy and wonderful Worthy of worship and praise
In an article about this hymn, one writer explains that "it is not just enough to say He is worthy of our praise, we are to praise Him each and every day no matter what our circumstances may be."
And it is also not enough to just praise God with our lips, our whole being, all of our faculties, and even our "strength" (Luke 10:27) are to praise God. If we love someone or something that much, it will come out in our expressions and body language.
How Do We Express Ourselves in Worship?
In order to begin talking about how God expects us to express ourselves in worship, we need to understand that since we do not even deserve to approach God because of our sinfulness (we only get to because of the blood of Jesus), we do not get to determine what kind of expressions we should give to God in our worship.
Instead, we must look to God's Word to see how he has already revealed to us and instructed us to worship him.
Thanks to the work of other theologians, here are nine expressions for our worship that we can find in the Book of Psalms:
- Shouting (Psalm 27:6); Bowing (Psalm 95:6); Speaking (Psalm 34:1);
- Singing (Psalm 37:6); Dancing (Psalm 149:3); Standing (Psalm 119:120);
- Clapping (Psalm 47:1); Lifting Hands (Psalm 63:4); Playing Instruments (Psalm 33:2,3).
As the compiler of the above list explains, none of these expressions are foreign to our culture. For example, at a wedding when the bride walks in, people stand. When a man proposes to a woman, he kneels.
When our team wins, we cheer, shout, and maybe even dance (or at least jump up and wave our arms). When we hear something, we enjoy it, we clap.
Both the talented and untalented sing and play instruments in so many different settings, such as school events, sporting events, and parties.
We listen to music during almost everything we do from driving down the road, to shopping, working, exercising, taking a shower, and relaxing.
And one of the more common expressions that we all make is hand-raising. As I expounded more fully in this article, we lift our hands at sporting events or competitions when our team scores, when we want to get someone's attention, when we witness an amazing performance, when we are reaching for something above us, and many other times.
We could certainly go to many other places in Scripture to find how God expects his worshipers to respond, such as people falling on their faces in worship in Nehemiah 8:6 and raising their hands in worship in Ezra 9:5.
Throughout the Old Testament, when God's people won a battle, were delivered from slavery, or had some other reason to celebrate, they did not hold back in their excitement.
My point with these examples is that even the most expression-less people are still expressive in certain situations. You could even make the argument that our human nature is such that we are the most expressive about the things we care the most about.
What Is the Biblical Definition of Worship?
However, many Christians do not see worship in this way. Some denominations would frown on physical expressiveness in worship while other churches might allow it, but only in one of their service options that (as one author has noticed), have “…different worship ‘styles’ to accommodate people’s preferences.”
The fact that David listed all of these reactions in his psalms illustrates for us that all of these normal human expressions can and should be used in worship to God.
In fact, the original reason why God created us with this propensity for these expressions was because he wanted us to praise Him with them.
As the Westminster Shorter Catechism states, The "chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever." This reminds us of Paul's instruction to consider everything we do (even ordinary routines such as eating and drinking) as an opportunity to glorify God (1 Corinthians 10:31).
This also reminds us of Jesus' reiteration of the Hebrew Shema in Matthew 22:37 when he gave his followers the "Great Commandment" to "love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind."
David was a man "after God's own heart." And while we cannot emulate all of his life, we would do well to follow the example of his "worship style" when he celebrated and worshiped "with all his might" (2 Samuel 6:14).
He expressed his praise to God like no one was watching, and he was willing to become even more contemptible or undignified in order to honor God more (2 Samuel 6:22).
As worshipers, we do not have to worry about whether our biblically appropriate worship expressions (such as hand-raising, clapping, or bowing) are distracting or not (because as one Desiring God author writes, true worship always displays and does not distract).
But what we do have to be careful of is that our hearts are in the right place. It is our human tendency to take what God meant for the worship of him and to use it to bring attention to ourselves — thereby making ourselves our own idol.
As John Calvin put it, our nature is “...a perpetual factory of idols" — and having hearts focused on ourselves, our opinions, our preferences, our desires, and our looks in our worship instead of focused on God is one of the many ways that we drift toward idolatry.
We can become like the monks that Martin Luther criticized when we synthesize expectations and guidelines for our worship that God never gave us (Ibid.).
What Does This Mean?
So, while we should "beware of practicing [our] righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them" as Jesus warned in Matthew 6:1, we should beware even more of not making much of Jesus through our expressions when we contemplate his sovereignty, beauty, grace, love, holiness, and justice.
Because one day in the future, "every knee [will] bow... and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Philippians 2:10–11). Let's get a head start and express our worship to him here in every way we can!
For further reading:
Why Do Christians Sing Praise and Worship Songs?
What Is the Difference Between Veneration and Worship?
Photo Credit: ©Unsplash/priscilla-du-preez
