WORSHIP

Worship is one of the buzz words in Christianity today. Invariably, at the start of a Sunday morning meeting someone stands up on the platform and says something like “let’s start our meeting with praise and worship”. The band then begins performing and the people watching stand up and start to sing some popular songs.

In some churches they clap their hands or wave their arms around in the air to the accompanying music and in some they dance around or jig up and down on the spot.

In some churches the more you do this, the more spiritual you appear. The end result is to get a warm fuzzy feeling so that you can express a few drawn out spiritual phrases like ‘Ohhhh Jesus!’ Or ‘Jeeeesus is Lord!’

Once the faster and louder praise songs are over you then sing some quieter and slower ‘worship’ songs.

At the end of the meeting, you might hear someone say to another “wasn’t that terrific worship this morning?”

What these people don’t know because they have been fed a lie by the leadership is that what they did that morning had nothing to do with worship. It was nothing more than a musical performance by a few talented musicians who are good at warming up people and then feeding into the emotions of the listeners. It is the way of the world.

I was watching TV early one Sunday morning. I switched on to a secular music programme and watched the musicians performing before a crowd. Then I switched over to Channel 10 to Hillsong's service. Apart from the words of the songs, what was happening was identical. I switched back and forth between the two programmes and each time they were identical during the concert and so called ‘worship’. In both people were singing, waving arms, jigging up and down in like manner.

Did we copy Satan or did Satan copy us? I don’t know but I have a feeling that it was the former as we are good at taking the world on board, especially if it makes us popular or money.

According to scripture, you know that book which we are not too keen on following; worship has nothing to do with singing. Simply put it says to worship is to prostrate oneself before the person who is your captor.

In the old days when an army commander or king was defeated in war, he would be captured and made to kneel before his conqueror. This was a sign of his defeat and being humiliated.

In the old days, to worship a god, you fell on your knees or prostrated yourself in front of its image. Religion didn’t invent this, God did. In the New Testament, worship relates to prayer and literally means “to crouch, crawl, prostrate oneself before another”.

This should not surprise us as in accepting the salvation that Jesus offers we are surrendering ourselves to him. When we prostrate ourselves before him in prayer we are acknowledging the fact that he has conquered us and we are accepting his lordship over us. In other words we are his loyal and obedient servants.

When someone says to you “wasn’t that a terrific time of worship” after you sang some songs, tell him the truth. Tell him “no, it wasn’t because we didn’t prostrate ourselves before God in prayer.”

Come to think of it, perhaps that is why most churches don’t like praying. It is an admission of surrender and dependence on someone else. We don’t usually like that idea.