Worship Matters – Chapters 2 and 3

The musicians at my church (Indelible Grace Church) are reading through a book called Worship Matters. Here’s my thoughts on Chapters 2 and 3.

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Two things really stood out to me in these chapters.

The first one was cautioning us not to make idols that we won’t even be aware of. The book says “My life was one extended attempt to draw attention to my gifts, my abilities, and my efforts. But it wasn’t working. I wasn’t getting the praise I craved, and that was affecting my soul. I increasingly struggled with feelings of anxiety, fear, and confusion. I felt like my life was about to fall apart.” I think this can be so true for those who do very “visible” ministry stuff, like leading songs, presiding, etc. We can rely entirely on people’s feedback to base our image of ourselves upon (not to say feedback is a bad thing, but we should not base our self-worth on it). Regardless of whether this feedback is highly positive or negative, both can get us into trouble with idolatry. Either we get very positive feedback, which we use to puff up our pride, or very negative feedback, which we use to create doubt and fear within ourselves. As a musician, I know this is a very easy trap to fall into. What sets us free from this is the gospel.

As the book says, “I was striving to gain the approval of those whose approval was of no eternal significance. I’d failed to see that the only approval that matters-God’s-is impossible to earn but is offered as a gift through the gospel. And it was the gospel that set me free. Gary had been right. I’d felt hopeless, but not hopeless enough. I knew Jesus died on the cross to save sinners from God’s wrath, enduring in our place the punishment we deserved. I understood that I couldn’t save myself. I just didn’t think of myself as a very great sinner. Which meant I didn’t need a very great Savior. When I sought glory for myself, praise for my accomplishments, and credit for my growth, I wasn’t depending on a Savior-I was searching for an audience.” This is so true. I don’t know if I can even add on anything to this. God has been moving me to see the depths of my sin, and the more I see it, the greater I know the gospel is. What we need is experiential knowledge of the gospel, not just head knowledge.

The second thing is something that God has totally been convicting my heart of. The Bible tells us to worship God in truth, and we need to know who God is in order to do that. The book says that “When we’re dodgy about our theology, we’re really saying we want our own Jesus. But our worship isn’t based on people’s personal opinions, ideas, or best guesses about Jesus. Nor should we base our understanding of him on anyone’s individual experiences. He has a name, a particular history, and a specifically revealed body of teaching. God has theology; will we sharpen our own biblical understanding to find out what it is? Will we worship the Son of God, the Redeemer, the second person of the Trinity, the Alpha and Omega, our High Priest, sanctifier, and intercessor and seek to understand what all this means?” I totally agree. I’m glad IGC doesn’t only sing hecka shallow songs which only say that we love Jesus and he’s awesome. Of course those two things are true, but when we sing songs which go deeper into who God is and why he’s awesome, and what Jesus has done, then I feel that it helps people connect the dots as to why we are lifting up praise.

Tying these two points together, the book says that “My prayer for myself and every worship leader is that we’ll become as familiar with the Word of Truth as we are with our instruments. Hopefully even more so. If we do, there’s a strong possibility people are going to walk away from our meetings more amazed by our God than by our music. And that will be a very good thing.” This gets me really excited. When our hearts are in the right place, we want our congregation to glorify God when they worship, and we won’t be asking them to focus on our musicianship/skills/etc. Instead, we’ll want them to see the truth that God has revealed, and be amazed by it. That is awesome.

Idolatry

This is basically a repost of an email I sent out earlier today, but I thought it had good content that should be shared, so here it is:

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I accidentally ended up in the wrong place in a book I was reading on my Kindle today, but before I noticed I was in the wrong place, I read this awesome quote:

“The temple of Aphrodite in Corinth where sex was part of worship has now gone global with strip clubs and porn. The small shrines that filled ancient homes and required homage and financial sacrifice have long since been upgraded with home entertainment systems and high-speed Internet connections… Indeed, when our culture is considered through the lens of worship and idolatry, primitive ancient paganism seems far less primitive or ancient. This is because everyone everywhere is continually worshiping, and idolatry is, sadly, seen more easily when we examine other cultures rather than our own. This is because we often have too narrow an understanding of worship and do not see that idolatry empowers our sin.”

“Rather, we are continually giving ourselves away or pouring ourselves out for a person, cause, experience, achievement, or status. Sadly, as the doctrine of the fall reveals, much of how we pour ourselves out and what we pour ourselves into in worship is someone or something other than the Trinitarian Creator God.” (Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe)

I want to encourage us to be careful about how we use our time and energy, and spend them in ways which glorify God. It’s so easy for us to read passages about idol worshippers in the Bible and think to ourselves about how we would never do such primitive practices. But we are surrounded by so many things which can capture our hearts and minds, and cause us to put our hope into them instead of God. So I want to encourage all of us to look out for one another and check up on each other to make sure that our eyes are focused on God, and develop loving, trusting relationships with each other where we are willing to call each other out when we struggle with idolatry without knowing it ourselves.