"[W]orship is the proper response of all moral beings to God, ascribing all
honour and worth to their Creator-God precisely because he is worthy."
D. A. Carson
I have been thinking over the past number of months as to the quality of my worship, of doing what Carson describes above, responding properly to God, ascribing to him all honour and worth simply because he is God. I have been thinking about worship because I think our understanding of worship as a broad Christian culture is often far too narrow and thus we do not live a life of worship as we are guided by Scripture to live. We only have ourselves to blame, as we will come to see, for not listening to Scripture over the constant noise about what constitutes worship from the Christian culture around us.
Here’s what I mean - we call our Sunday morning services, ‘worship services,’ as though this is the only time, or at least the most important time, we offer worshipful service to God. Many churches have a ‘worship committee’ whose job it has been to make sure that the Sunday morning service runs well. To make matters worse, we often narrow our phraseology of worship even more, referring to the musicians and song leaders who lead us in singing as the ‘worship team’ and our hymnals, if we use them, carry the subtitle ‘For Worship and Celebration.’ Then we suggest that those who are demonstrating physical signs - raising hands, closing eyes, swaying, etc - during the signing are really worshiping and those who are just standing there are not. What a narrow (and wrong) understanding of worship we have developed.
Let me get something out of the way. The Scriptures are clear that we must gather together (Hebrews 12). They also encourage us to "exalt the Lord together" (Psalm 34:3). But they are equally clear that our gathering together is not the be all and end all of how we worship God. Our entire life is to be constant worship – Sunday is just one moment of, one expression of what is to be a life of perpetual worship. We need to understand that for the Christian, worship is commanded to be a 24-7 activity. We must engage in the worship of our God every moment of every day of our lives, no matter what we find ourselves doing.
The applications of this reality are legion, but I will focus on just two; one general and one more specific. First, we must worship God in all that we do. Worship does not begin when the Sunday morning service begins and end when Pastor Jared finally shuts up. No! Worship takes place during the service, and continues when we leave the church and begin engaging in the mundane activities of our lives that include marriage, raising children, our job, our social life etc. Back to our definition of worship cited above, "[W]orship is the proper response of all moral
beings to God, ascribing all honour and worth to their Creator-God precisely because he is worthy." This we must do ALL the time, not just on Sundays for a couple of hours.
To draw out the second application of this reality let me ask you a couple of questions, but first reread our definition of worship - "[W]orship is the proper response of all moral beings to God, ascribing all honour and worth to their Creator-God precisely because he is worthy." Now ask yourself the following questions (1) What kind of / how much worship is God worth?; (2) What kind of worship do I give him?
I’m hoping that your answer to the first question would be something like ‘Everything I am,’ or ‘All that I do’ or ‘a lot’ or some combination thereof. Or even better, maybe your answer echoes 1 Corinthians 10:31, "So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God," or Colossians 3:17, "And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." I’m also assuming that your answer then, to question 2 indicates that you have fallen woefully short of your answer to question 1.
But let us not find discouragement here, let us find a challenge. Let us be challenged to give God all that he is worth in all that we find ourselves doing. Let us not just develop a work-ethic so that we can get ahead or keep our jobs or satisfy some lust for perfection, let us develop a worship-ethic that drives us to demonstrate God’s worth in all that we do because he is worthy of our best all the time. Let us remember what Martin Luther has said in this regard, "What you do in your house [the practical stuff of life] is worth as much as if you did it up in heaven for our Lord God." How true this is. Let’s begin living like it.
Soli Deo Gloria