God is the Audience of My Worship
Gordon Dahl said, “Most middle-class Americans tend to worship their work, work at their play, and play at their worship.”
William Temple, the renowned archbishop of Canterbury, defined worship as quickening the conscience by the holiness of God, feeding the mind with the truth of God, purging the imagination by the beauty of God, opening the heart to the love of God, and devoting the will to the purpose of God
Worship is one of those over-arching, very emotional, often conflict-ridden topics that is central to our faith. To talk about worship is difficult and even at times dangerous. To not talk about it is to ignore one of the most important and fundamental elements in the practicing of Christianity.
One of the greatest reasons why this topic is so difficult to dialogue about revolves around us. We are, at least primarily, the problem. We approach worship much like we approach everything else in life. We are consumers. And more to the point, we are experienced consumers of recreation and enjoyment. When we go out for dinner, when we visit the home of a friend, when we watch a show on television, when we listen to the radio on the drive home for work… we evaluate everything from a utilitarian, enjoyment culture. How much did I like that? What did that do for me? Was it what I wanted it to be? Did it taste right – which is really to say – did it taste the way I wanted it to?
The question is not whether or not humans today are hungering for worship and spirituality. Of course they are. We just don’t know how or where to go. In one of those mall-based, fast-food style eateries, a restaurant worker pulled from the oven one day a Cinnamon Bun which bore an uncanny resemblance to the face of Mother Theresa. The owner called the local paper, the story and photo circulated. Before long there were long lines of people coming to see, even coming to worship. How true is it that part of our problem today must revolve around the fact that we can’t tell the difference between the Bread of Life and cheap junk food.
And we bring this materialistic, self-indulgent worldview into the church house and act out of it quite willingly. Oh, in our higher and better moments we translate it into more appropriate religious vocabulary. We want worship to sound “right”, to look ‘right’ to feel ‘right.’ We say that we don’t want worship to be entertaining. But of course we do. We want it to entertain a very specific mindset, to indulge a very specific set of expectations, to interest a specific way of thinking.
We just don’t know how to be honest about it. We take the word ‘entertain’ and make it sound unholy, irreverent and use it to defend against any attack that might impede on the kind of worship we’re sure we’re supposed to engage in. And all the while, we’re preventing any sense of true worship.
How so?
We’re put ourselves at the center. Is this what I expect it to be? Does this serve my understanding of what it means to ‘act holy?’ Is this the kind of music that I enjoy? What did I get out of that service? What did I feel? What did I get?
And the whole time we act as if the Sunday morning worship experience is a self-help session designed to help religious addicts get their weekly fix. As if this is meant to satisfy us.
God is the Audience of My Worship.
This is about Him.
Are there ways in which God uses this time to grow me? Yes. Are there times when God uses this time to lift and care and comfort or confront, or cajole me? Sure. Can worship be entertaining? Of course. The word ‘entertain’, literally form Webster’s Dictionary, means, “to hold the attention of.” Should worship hold my attention? Of course it should.
But that’s the problem. I walk in wanting you to do something that holds my attention to my mindset about what my perception of my religion is. Impress me. Wow me. Dazzle me. Touch me. Your job – your role to do this for me.
Wrong.
God is the Audience of My Worship.
Hear those words again and where the responsibility for success lies.
God is the Audience – God receives. Of My Worship – My choice, my gift, my offering.
Don’t think of audience as a group of people looking to escape from the world for a few minutes going to see a movie. Instead, think of an audience that is given by a royal King, inviting a few of His subjects into the Throne Room to spend a few minutes sharing with Him the gifts of the Hearts and the gratitude of their souls.
Listen to these words of focus and certainty from theologian, speaker and brilliant author Marva Dawn: “While many worship services allow congregants to be an audience, viewing the pastor and musicians as actors, genuine worship happens when everyone knows that God is the audience. Musicians and pastors are the prompters, or coaches, or stage managers, but all of us are the actors and all our worship acts are directed to God.”
God is the Audience of My Worship.
I can’t make you worship. I can try to set the mood. I can work to remove obstacles in my choices of words, the images I put in front of you. Jeff can try to give words to you through song choices, through scriptures. But we can’t make you worship. Only you can do that. Only you can recognize and consider, and act and worship God – and keep at the forefront of your mind, body, heart and soul that He alone is the entire audience of your worship.
Of course, scripture enables us to see ways in which each of can do this. Reading from the Psalms you can see in these unpolished prayers of real people how God and God alone was the object and the audience of their worship.
Let me share with you five ways you can practice Worshipping with God as the Audience.
1. Acknowledge His Presence
“Give me your lantern and compass, give me a map, So I can find my way to the sacred mountain, to the place of your presence” Psalm 43:3 (Message)
“Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! Psalm 95:2 (NRSV)
“Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth. Worship the LORD with gladness; come into his presence with singing.” Psalm 100:1-2 (NRSV)
Worship calls me and enables me to gaze at the unseen yet obvious presence of the Divine and Eternal One in our midst.
A true story - a woman entered a Haagen-Dazs store on the Kansas City Plaza for an ice-cream cone. After making her selection, she turned and found herself face to face with Paul Newman. He was in town filming the movie Mr. and Mrs. Bridge. Newman’s blue eyes caused her knees to buckle. She managed to pay for her cone, then left the shop, heart pounding. When she gained her composure, she realized she didn’t have her cone. She started back to the store to get it and met Newman at the door. "Are you looking for your ice-cream cone?" he asked. She nodded, unable to speak. "You put it in your purse with your change." When was the last time the presence of God quickened your pulse and brought you to such a point of mystery, discovery and encounter that you lost track of everything else you were doing?
R. C. Sproul once said, "If people find worship boring and irrelevant, it can only mean they have no sense of the presence of God in it. It is impossible to be bored in the presence of God if you know that He is there." True biblical worship so satisfies our total personality that we don’t have to shop around for man-made substitutes.
In his classic work, Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster writes: “To worship is to experience Reality, to touch Life. It is to know, to feel, to experience the resurrected Christ in the midst of the gathered community.”
2. Abdicate the Throne.
“Among the gods there is none like you, O Lord; no deeds can compare with yours. All the nations you have made will come and worship before you, O Lord; they will bring glory to your name. For you are great and do marvelous deeds; you alone are God.
Teach me your way, O Lord, and I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name. I will praise you, O Lord my God, with all my heart; I will glorify your name forever. For great is your love toward me; you have delivered me from the depths of the grave.” Psalm 86:8-13
For worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose -- and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin. – Warren Wiersbe
A couple years ago the professional football team, the Tennessee Titans, were involved in a heart wrenching defeat in the Super Bowl. All season they had fought back from deficits to win and it appeared as though they were going to pull off another comeback victory over the Rams. But to the dismay of Titan fans in the Rocky Top state, they came up about a yard and a half short.
The next evening when the team returned to Nashville they were bused to Adelphia Coliseum where more than 45,000 fans had gathered to greet and honor their team.
People painted their faces. They put on their Titan hats and jerseys. They screamed wildly as the team exited the bus and players were introduced.When that tribute to the Titans team was over not one fan walked away saying, “That event was a dud. That did nothing for me.”
The event was a great success, not because of the performance, the team didn’t play. It wasn’t their speeches, because few of the players are great public speakers. It was a great success because people understood the purpose. The purpose wasn’t to please the fans. The purpose of the event was to honor the team and show how much they were appreciated.
That is what worship is about. Not about pleasing you and me, but expressing our appreciation and love to our Lord and Savior.
“Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.” Psalm 95:1-7
Let me again borrow from Marva Dawn. To be Christian is to acknowledge, to believe and to evidence with our lives that God – revealed to us in Jesus Christ – is everything to us: Creator, Provider and Sustainer; Deliverer, Redeemer and Lord; Santifier, Inspirer and Empowerer. Since Salvation, Sanctification and Spirituality are entirely God’s gifts to us and never deserved or earned – Christian worship above all else makes clear who is the giver of that and every gift. Christian worship makes clear who belongs and who indeed is on the throne – Yahweh God, Jesus Christ, Reigning Spirit.
In worship, I abdicate the throne. God is the Audience of My Worship.
3. Ascribe His Worth
This is literally the meaning of the word worship – to ascribe worth. To worship God is to recognize his worth or worthiness; to look God-ward, and to acknowledge in all appropriate ways the value of what we see.
“Ascribe to the Lord, O mighty ones, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.” Psalm 29:1-2
“Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and glory are in his sanctuary. Ascribe to the Lord, O families of nations, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; bring an offering and come into his courts. Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness; tremble before him, all the earth. Say among the nations, ‘The Lord reigns.’ The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity. Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it; let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy; they will sing before the Lord, for he comes, he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his truth.” Psalm 96:6-13
The Bible calls this activity "glorifying God" or "giving glory to God," and views it as the ultimate end, and from one point of view, the whole duty of humanity. It is to cry with the Psalmist, with those who stand at the foot of the cross, with the women and men who looked into the empty tomb, to speak with the witnesses in John’s Revelation, with those who have been martyred for the faith, with those whose lives have been eternally changed by the Power of the crucified and risen Lamb – Worthy, Worthy, Worthy is the Lord God Almighty – Who Was, Who is and Who is to come.
4. Admit My Need.
“O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands. My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you.” Psalm 63:1-5
French priest Teilhard de Chardin said, "We’re not just human beings having a temporary spiritual experience. But we’re spiritual beings having a temporary human experience." When I speak to people in worship, I’m not appealing to the human being; I’m appealing to the innate person inside, that new creature who does want to worship. The spiritual being, trapped in the confines of time, flesh and every day life who desperately longs to touch the infinite, timeless, boundless power of the Divine and Eternal One.
All of me has need of God.
5. Allow His Touch.
“We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name. May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you.” Psalm 33: 20-22
“Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits-- who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”
Psalm 103:1-5
“Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” Psalm 73:23-26
One time President Calvin Coolidge is quoted as saying, “It is only when men begin to worship that they begin to grow.”
Worship is a conversation in progress. Worship is not just a gathering of people at a certain time around a certain idea. Worship is the joining of our spirits with anyone in the universe who is worshiping. It’s like plugging into a current that’s always on.
Every day I am to be about the things of God. Each week we come together and touch on the elements of God; His Word, His truth, His Lordship, His Sacrifice, His Call. But each time we touch on things of God, we must be touched by God – shaped and changed. That is part of the mysterious, magnificent power of worship – God uses to touch and to shape us. Dallas Williard writes: “To handle the things of God without worship is always to falsify them.”
When God touches me, everything changes.
“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” 1 Peter 2:9-10
