What Is Worship? Part 4
“It is the practice of looking inward at the sinful nature of our own hearts, and calling ourselves to a life of obedience.”
The directions of worship are a tool for helping us to understand what the purpose of worship is. Vertical Worship is the most obvious and important. If we are worshiping God, we are supposed to be focused on him and his attributes. The second is a little less obvious. It can be hard to see how an individual worshiping while at church can impact the people around them, but it is a vital part of communal life within a church. The final direction of worship is inward. Inward worship is not about worshiping oneself. Rather, it is the practice of looking inward at the sinful nature of our own hearts, and calling ourselves to a life of obedience.
Inward - Forming Our Hearts Before God
Worship is more than an action.
In Matthew 5 during the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus speaks to the crowds about the commands of God. He explains that the commandment against murder is applicable to anger. Murder is an external action. Anger is an internal heart problem that causes hatred to fill us, effectively murdering them within our hearts. The point here is not that murder and anger are exactly the same, but rather that God is equally, if not more, interested in the internal problems of the heart than that of our external actions. When we worship, it cannot be a simple act of singing, going through the motions from Sunday to Sunday. When we worship, we are called to look at ourselves in connection to holy God, and that should drive us to worship God fully.
Worship asks us to look at ourselves.
As we look to God during worship, we should learn the same lesson presented in Isaiah 6.When Isaiah was brought before the throne of God and sees His righteousness and glory, Isaiah’s response is to fall down before him and declare “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips”. Some of the songs we sing will directly ask us to look at our sinfulness. As we worship, we have to remind ourselves that we have failed in many ways and we are completely undeserving of serving the Lord.
“We are free to recognize that musical worship of God is a good gift, and that is yet another reason to worship Him.”
Inward Worship drives us to Vertical Worship.
The cycle of worship then goes back around as we then celebrate the goodness of God’s grace and love for us. Recognition of our individual sinfulness drives us to confront the reality that we cannot do it ourselves. We are in desperate need of a savior to enter into our brokenness and redeem us. When our sinfulness is clear to us, we are then driven to recognize the truth about who God is. Worship is an activity of constant cycles. We learn who God is and celebrate Him. As we worship, we look around us and are encouraged by the faith of others during periods of doubt. We then confront our doubts and sins and finally are driven to celebrate that we are no longer dead but alive in Christ. Over and over again. This is why God has instilled a pattern of worship for our faith and for our relationship with Him. These patterns often function at a subconscious level, but when we fully recognize the truth about worship, we are freed to worship God more fully. We are free to recognize that musical worship of God is a good gift, and that is yet another reason to worship Him.
Zach is the Minister of Worship and Students at Redeemer and joined the team in early 2022. He and his wife Madison live in Terrell. You can connect with Zach here.