The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him in Ephesians 1:3,
"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ."
I have to admit that when it comes to contemporary concepts of worship, I am lost. We live in a day where, at many churches, the congregation shows up to be motivated by a well rehearsed "worship team" whose job it is to move every one's heart. If they get the folks pumped up for God, the team has accomplished its mission, if they fail to do so, they fail in their mission. There they are, up on the platform, talented, practiced and, for the most part, flawless in their performance. My hat is off to them, they are capable of doing things I never could. But... look at who is up on the stage? Shouldn't it be God? Isn't sincere and genuine worship generated within us as we gaze upon our wonderful God himself, rather than us needing cheerleaders to get us pumped up about him? What is it God is missing that he requires others to whip up our interest in him? Perhaps it is our attention...
And then we have others amongst us who note that, sadly, worship has become all about us, rather than God. We learn and sing shallow songs in our "worship services" (since when is worship a service, anyway? Romans 12:1-2 speaks of our service as that which should come from our worship, not the other way around!) that reflect on how God moves me, how God makes me feel, what God has done for me. It is all about I, me and mine. I have to agree with much said here. I do note, however, that Paul's reflections in these chapters are about what God has done for us. He does it in such a way, though, that his focus isn't on the goodies I get, but on the wonderful things God has done. Perhaps I am just splitting hair here...
We also have the theologians who tell us our worship is stunted and stilted because we fail to worship "in Christ". We fail to acknowledge our identification with Christ in our worship and so we don't somehow enter into worship the right way. I guess I just get lost in the prepositions here - I just don't get it. From my perspective, when they have finished speaking, I'm not really sure they have said anything.
How about we take a tip from Paul and just be fascinated with God all by himself. Who he is, what he is like and what he has done? That is what Paul does here. Many of the scenes of worship I find in the Scriptures lack the performance of others to pump up the worshipper. I find accounts of those who had some kind of encounter with God and the seeming resulting extemporaneous response that became their expression of worship a demonstration that true worship comes from being awestruck by God. Whether it is Abraham's servant finding a wife for Isaac, Genesis 24:26-27 or Job's horrific encounter with God, Job 42:1-6 or the shepherds and angels that attended the announcement of Jesus' birth, Luke 2:8-20 or the scenes in heaven we find in Revelation 5:11-14; 7:9-12; 11:16-18; 15:3-4, etc.
In any event, I find Paul's worship very compelling here: "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ." What a wonderful God we have who has done such marvelous deeds!
Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share your thoughts of worship with us from your Bible reading today. We'd love to hear from you!
Trevor Fisk
trevor.fisk@gmail.com
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