Worship

What is Worship? 

What is worship?

Is it singing songs in Sunday morning church? Listening to the Christian radio station on the way to work? Praising the Lord in the shower while shampooing? Haha, we have all been there.

Or is worship something so much more than we ever imagined?

Hey everyone! Since I launched on the race back in January, God has been teaching me a lot about what worship is. He has been revealing to me through scripture, experiences, and wise people that worship is so much more than I ever believed it to be. I want to share what I have believed it to be and what God has shown me on my time in the race. I hope it inspires you to dive deeper in what worship can be because it is such a beautiful, intimate place with the Lord.

I grew up in the church and my first contact with worship was during Sunday morning church. It was something that was done before and after the sermon and we always did from a book. You stood up, sang the 2-3 songs, then sat back down silently. Then, in middle school when I got into the youth group at church we had worship nights. This was more current songs and we would sing for 30-45 minutes in our youth room and were encouraged to focus on the words we were singing. In college, worship became a place to sit with the Lord, where we would sing repetitive songs that helped you meditate and praise him. Something that all these settings have in common is that worship was something done in a church setting within a given time slot. It developed over the years into something more intimate with the Lord, but it was always kept within a time frame and within a group of people.

Now I am not saying this is bad, because I have been blessed with some incredibly sweet moments with the Lord in these settings and I always looked forward to this form of worship. However, I share this because this was my entire concept of worship before January of this year.

So what have I learned in these four months?

First I would like to share a verse that God showed me when I was in Costa Rica back in January. It was the initial spark that began this journey of discovering the depth of worship.

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God-this is your true and proper worship.” Romans 12:1

This verse made me question the very concept of worship. I asked, “what is true and proper worship look like if it’s offering my body as a living sacrifice?”. This is more than just singing praise to the Lord. I also asked myself, “have I been limiting my idea of worship?” because this is talking about “true and proper worship”, but I don’t know that I have ever worshiped like this. I wanted to see what more God had in store for me in terms of worship.

This leads into my experiences with worship so far on the race. I have experienced our ministry host back in Costa Rica worshiping with freedom and literally bowing before the lord while praising his name. It was evident in their song that they were in awe and were completely laying it all on the table before him. It was beautiful and I knew I wanted to learn to worship the Lord in total freedom and abandonment. Then I experienced worship as a means to change the atmosphere (which will have a blog post soon) in the hostels we have stayed at in both Jaco and San Jose, Costa Rica. Through worship in song
and in our daily lives as believers, people who we didn’t know felt drawn to knowing more and could tangibly feel the atmosphere change to one of peace, safety, and comfort. The last experience that really struck me was my times of worship alone with the Lord and with my friend Chelsey, as we wrote songs to praise him and enjoyed creating beautiful music for Him. Worship through these experiences became abandonment and freedom, an atmosphere changer, and simply speaking to God how
great He is.

The last challenge to my view of worship came from the wise advice of a friend here in Guatemala. She said, “worship can be sweeping the floors, cleaning the toilet, cooking a meal for someone, setting up a room for an event, or even taking care of your physical, mental, spiritual needs. It isn’t about the work you are doing, rather it is about your heart posture to the Lord. If I am sweeping the floors and doing it for the Lord, I am worshiping Him. If I am sick and take time to heal my body, I am worshiping him. It’s the fact that your doing it for the Him and honoring what He has blessed you with”. This
stuck out to me because it related so evidently back to Romans 12:1. In our daily choices of going to work, serving a friend, cleaning our house, raising our children, etc.; we can be praising the Lord. He taught me through this conversation that if I am focused on him and offering myself to him daily to do whatever is asked of me to the best of my ability, then I am “offer[ing] my body as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God”.

I believe the Lord has even more to teach me on worship, but how incredible is it that this simple word, worship, holds so much meaning, intention, and power! I would love to hear what the Lord has revealed to each of you on worship and I can not wait to continue this journey with Him. I hope y’all have a blessed day!