Has Your Worship Been Stolen?

After writing last week about tradition and methodology in the church, I began to think about worship. A few thoughts came to mind that follow. As noted last week, God is desirous of true worshippers; those who worship from the heart, in faith, and with pure motives. My purpose here is not to trot out the scriptures of David dancing before the Lord or to otherwise try and argue for a variety of worship styles. Style and methods are not as important as to understand what true worship is.

Though we know this, we need to be reminded that a spiritual battle rages around us. There are very real implications of this. The devil wars against believers with many strategies, some blatant and some subtle. I believe that one tactic of the devil is to rob God of worship and believers of the joy of worshiping. The list of ways he has accomplished this in the church is endless, but fruitless arguments over music styles is one way he has had great success in our culture today. Our focus has been removed from praising God to whose way of praising God is better. Bitterness and pride become impediments to true worship and thus rob God of the focus of our affections, destroy relationships between churches and individual believers, and demonstrates to the unbelieving world around us how fractured we are.


Singing along half-heartedly while our mind is somewhere else. I've been in the church a long time and know many songs. How many times have I mouthed the words to a song while my mind wandered aimlessly out the door? How many times have I not considered the meaning of the words I am singing?

Convincing believers that worship is just singing and praying. We go to church on Sunday because we are commanded not to forsake the assembling of believers. Corporate worship is valuable for many reasons. Corporate worship is not, however, all there is to worship. More on that in the next paragraph.


Another tactic the devil may use, and let me say this carefully, may be digging so deeply for doctrine, that we have missed some things closer to the surface. Looking at scripture with a microscope is good and necessary, but we also need to stand back and look at the entire picture as well. What do I mean? The bible has a lot to say about the life of King David. Scripture calls him a man after God's own heart. I believe the church would do well to analyze the life of this man, including the way David worshipped. I'm not talking about style here, I'm talking about substance. Step back and look at the book of Psalms as a whole; this man incorporated worship into his lifestyle (I know, David didn't write all of Psalms). David experienced the joy of true worship and his worship was acceptable to the Lord.


Let us not get hung up on style over substance. True worship spills out of our hearts and into our lives. Don't let the devil rob God of your worship. Better still, let US not rob God of worship due Him.