Let me tell you—there is nearly nothing like a good, intimate time of worship with the Lord. On Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights, I just absolutely adore that time where I get to revere the Lord with my church family.
However, I’m not just talking about the worship that we do on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. I’m talking about the kind that doesn’t have a specific format. The every day thing that we do to show God that we love Him and to praise Him.
I do believe, though, that we can get caught up in what makes good worship. As in, we worry whether or not ours would get the Lord’s stamp of approval. Well, as usual, the Bible’s got something to say about that. Turn with me to Isaiah, Matthew and Psalms.
For starters, our worship is not meant to be a show for others, whether we’re singing songs, painting pictures or writing poetry. We can (even unknowingly) focus on what our worship looks like, even if we;re not trying to exalt ourselves. For instance, when a child draws a picture of their parent and gives it to them, would a good parent say “this is hideous?” Of course not! In the same way, God is like this about our worship. God cares more about the heart behind it than what the worship itself looks like (Take a look at 1 Samuel 16:7). Good worship comes from a true heart that is beating for the Lord. And if ours does, I promise you, if God had a refrigerator, He’d put every single “bad” drawing on it.
It’s also intentional. There are two major traps that worship gets put into, and those are routine and “I was raised this way.” But, when we look at the very purpose of praise and worship, we see that it cannot become automated, rather, we have to truly take time to sit and process what the Lord has done and who He is, and praise Him for it. We can’t say “I’m doing this because I was taught and it’s what we do every Sunday”—we must say “I’m doing this because God is good and He deserves my praise.” Isaiah 29:13 (NIV) tells us that “The Lord says: ‘These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.'” That verse tells us that not only do we need to have our hearts in the right place for worship, but that it is meant to be intimate, because God cares about our individual hearts. More on that in a moment.
Good worship also exalts God, not us. In this world, there are many who worship the Lord because it makes them look good. That is reminiscent of the Pharisees. There are many instances of this, but in Matthew 23:5-7 (NIV), Jesus says that “‘Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by others.'” In other words, all of their servitude is for their benefit, not to exalt the Lord. They literally obliterate the purpose of worship in their own idolatry of themselves. We’ve got to ensure that we don’t fall into the same trap—we’ve got to keep our hearts focused on the Lord as we worship Him.
On that note, good worship invites God to search down to the deepest parts of who we are, and God’s searching is a catalyst for His change. It is intimate. When we truly worship, we’re breaking down the walls that we’ve put up and inviting the Lord to move on us. We’re inviting Him to search the parts of our own hearts and souls that we are too scared or too broken to see—or, the parts that we didn’t even know were there. Psalm 139:23 (TPT) says, “God, I invite your searching gaze into my heart. Examine me through and through; find out everything that may be hidden within me. Put me to the test and sift through all my anxious cares.” When God searches our hearts, He’s creating ways for Him to nurture, to teach, to heal and to reveal His Will to us. We just have to let Him.
My sweet friends, I hope this encourages you to put your whole heart into your worship, no matter what it looks like. Peel back those layers and let the Lord love the real you, and praise Him for it. God doesn’t require our worship to be aesthetic—He requires it to be authentic.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
Katie Pennington is a writer and editor who is originally from Hazard, Kentucky, but currently resides with her family in central Tennessee (though she frequently visits her Appalachian roots). Her favorite Bible verse is Psalm 42:5, which reminds her that in despair, there’s hope in God, and there’s healing in praising Him.