What does worship mean to you? What does praise mean to you? Is worship something you participate in only at church? Is worship just music, offering and the message in church services? What then is praise? The simplest and most straight forward question is this: who are we as Christians to worship? Is praise simply songs? I invite you to consider the following reflections on these questions.
What does worship mean to Christians? What does it mean for Christians to praise God? Who are we to worship? We in the Christian and Missionary Alliance are called to worship God through Jesus Christ as He is our “Savior, Sanctifier, Healer and Coming King”. At Community Church we worship online, we’ve gathered in the church worship center, through “Zoom”, in others’ homes for Bible Study, prayer and fellowship, and in the outdoors.
Our worship of God wherever and however we gather is through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Worship includes but is not limited to prayers, petitions, calling and sending forth, offering praises, repentance and communion, offering of our tithes and offerings, the reading and teaching of the scriptures from the Bible, the music, and fellowship. Let us not forget worship is also the use of our spiritual gifts and talents for the work of the church and God’s kingdom. These elements of worship are all our collective efforts and focus to celebrate God’s nature, glory and perfect, holy attributes together.
The Holy Spirit’s work in and through called and sent individuals and as a church locally and around the world while meeting the unmet needs of those needing to hear the Gospel as Jesus commanded (Matt 28:17-20) is worship. The use of our spiritual gifts and talents for God’s glory is worship wherever we find ourselves in everyday life.
Worship is also when we take private, family or small group fellowship time to read, study and meditate on the scriptures, sing, pray and share testimonies of Jesus’ work in and through our lives. In Acts 2:42 & 46a we read, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking bread and to prayer. Every day they met in in the temple courts.”
Our personal relationship with God in devotion to Him as we seek “to love the Lord our God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your (strength) mind” (Deut 6:5 & Matt 22:37) with the Holy Spirit’s help is worship. Worship and devotion to our Savior Jesus Christ is demonstrated by our submission to His Lordship over and through our lives to become the person of faith He desires us to become. The faith we received when we accepted Jesus into our hearts and lives is critical for our learning to more fully trust and obey God in every circumstance of life is worship. (Psalm 4:5, Proverbs 3:5-6 & John 14:1). The author of Hebrews wrote about Old Testament examples of faith in God in chapter 11 and then declared,
“since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith….”
Confession and repentance of our sins through the forgiveness that is ours in Jesus Christ, is part of our worship to God as we submit ourselves to the teachings and Lordship of Jesus in obedience. Paul wrote to the Romans that “in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to god – this is your spiritual act of worship.”(Rom 12:1) Forgiving others as we have been completely forgiven is another part of worship that Jesus commanded in Mark 11:25 and is found in the teachings of Paul in Col 3:13. These are a few examples of what worshipping God means to me. What would you add to these reflections?
What then is praise and how does it relate to worship? Some people have written that praise is singing about the wonders, the character and the glory of God. This is true but only in part. Praise is also the spoken and thought/meditations of our hearts and spoken about the goodness and the grace of our heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. The praise of God is important as we become fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ. A few examples from the Old Testament refers to praise as the proclamation of the “greatness of our God” (Deut 32:3), God as “my Rock” (2 Sam 22:47), the Lord as “most worthy of praise” (1 Chron 16:25), and God’s “Praise will always be on my lips”(Ps 34:1).
We find a few examples of praising God in the New Testament where Jesus taught that we are to “praise your (our) Father in heaven”(Matt 5:16). Paul taught that God “(he) predestined us to be adopted as His sons through Jesus Christ ….to the praise of His glorious grace.”(Eph 1:5a & 6a). The writer of Hebrews wrote that we as believers in Jesus Christ are to “offer to God a sacrifice of praise”. (Heb 13:15)
Praising God is one part of what worship looks and sounds like in a gathered body of Christ and in the life of the believer. Praise is the spoken and sung outpouring of faith, hope, joy, thankfulness, humility, awe and adoration of God’s divine nature, what He has done, what He through Christ Jesus is doing and what has promised yet to do in the power of His Holy Spirit.
The outpouring of individuals’ hearts in praise, fellowship, shared testimonies, repentance, offering forgiveness, communion, tithes and offerings, sharing, speaking and preaching the scriptures and living God pleasing lifestyles, are a few examples of what it means to follow Jesus daily requiring us to walk in faith and obedience and are critical parts of worship. God knows our heart attitudes and thoughts, sees our actions, while hearing our words with the expectation of worship in our obedience for His glory, honor and praise.
