Some Thoughts From This Heart...

I heard one of the truest statements yesterday I think I’ve heard in a long time and it’s a thought that has been mulling around in this brain for some time, especially since I have been long removed from a corporate worship setting that is able to be “uplifting” in the ways I’ve grown so accustomed to. Because of that, it has caused me to think so much about what my “worship” to God really is and what it is that He expects of me in what we so commonly refer to as worship.

Heard yesterday in a conversation with someone this statement and to the best of my knowledge it went like this…”I don’t believe that our moments of truly awe-inspiring, God honoring worship usually happen within the walls of a church building.” I’m coming to believe that myself.

So why is it that we spend 90% of our budgets on doing things that happen within those walls and 10% on anything happening outside?? Why do we have well decorated, luxurious church buildings with starving people living 2 blocks away, and what does that say to a world about the Jesus we serve?

All fingers pointed at me here with the rest of any of us who have sat on our padded pews, who have come expecting “worship” instead of bringing my worship with me when I walked through the door. All fingers pointed in the direction of this heart, who expected a great song leader, a power packed sermon that lasted 30 minutes and no longer that affected change in my life, and every program that a church budget and it’s leadership could muster up to fit me right where I am in my life and “entertain” me into a worshipful state.

Shame on me for not noticing until I was 30 years old that I could kneel beside a bed of one who is hurting and pray there from the depths of the heart God gave me for a child to be healed and realize I had just “worshipped” in spirit and truth. Forgive me Father for not realizing that even as I go about my day with each person I encounter that I am given the choice to worship as I see you in each of them. Help me God to know that my Monday through Saturday is every bit as important as my Sunday from 10 am to 12 pm…and help me to live like I mean those words, instead of just saying them.

God would you raise up an army of your people, and will you please start here, who will give up the idea of a “perfect” worship assembly that meets our needs. God will you help us to remember that You invited us into Your family and took our every flaw away through the blood of Your Son, and will You help us to remember that we worship because You deserve it. Oh Father forgive us for making it something it was never intended to be…we are so human and somehow it always becomes about us.

Could you open our eyes to see the opportunities for true worship…not on a mountain or in Jerusalem or in our own temples we’ve made with our hands…but God would You help us to see every single one of them that You mark as holy ground and a moment and place for worship. Would you turn us into true worshippers that bless Your heart please?!

May this life be worship, as it seeks to love and serve You instead of myself.