Worship is serious
I suppose the Old Testament contains enough examples of many well-meaning folks who lost their lives because of careless worship – God killed them! Before you ever stand in the presence of worship know this: God is serious; a time to worship Him is not a time to showcase yourself, but a time to correctly and humbly join other believers to honour the Almighty. Such a high responsibility calls for serious prayer and self-examination before it is undertaken.
Worship is for God, not people
Ever heard some sincere Christian say something like “I didn’t like worship today”? My answer to that would be “It’s fine if you didn’t like worship because we were not worshipping you.” I don’t really know where we got this evil idea that Church service is a customer service program instead of being a God centred-gathering. It’s about God! Therefore, keep it in mind when you lead the people that you are not there to itch their ears but to exalt the living God. If He is pleased by the way you worship Him, who cares what humans think?
Worship must be Scripture driven
Another saying would define worship as an outward expression that exalts the Lord because of the inward estimation of Him. This means that the higher you esteem God inwardly, the deeper you express that estimation outwardly. Therefore, for individuals to highly esteem God inwardly, they must be informed by Scripture about who He is and what He has done. Then for them to go on and correctly express that estimation outwardly, Scripture must guide them again. Hence a mature church makes sure that its “worship team” is regulated by the Pastor himself (who teaches them correct worship through the Bible). Even more, worshippers themselves must know Scripture for their own spirituality; for how can they lead people to worship a God they don’t know themselves? Following that are the songs themselves; they must communicate the very same truth that is written in Scripture. I highly recommend the reading of Scripture (the Psalms) before the singing starts. Worship without Scripture is nothing but meaningless passion and stimulation.
Worship is not emotions!
In most worship services I have been to, I have noticed that being emotional is the definition of true worship. Somehow the worship leaders work so hard to sing in a way that makes people sad until they cry (emotional manipulation). When everyone has rolled on the floor and cried (pretended to cry), then Christians label that as a Spirit-filled powerful service. This, of course, is caused by the man-centred customer service approach that I hinted above. Such defines worship in terms of how it makes me feel instead of what glories God. If you are feeling so emotional, then – according to you – it means you are worshipping? That is not worshipping God but it’s worshipping your feelings about God. At worse, that is self-idolatry! There is nothing wrong with emotions, after all, we are called to worship with everything in ourselves including emotions, however, we must learn to correctly use our emotions. Hence, we do not have to whip up ourselves emotionally every time to correctly honour the Lord.
Song selection
I guess we have already established the point that good worship contains Scripture, especially singing. Therefore, do a good song selection and shun a lot of these romantic, repetitive and man-centred songs that have nothing to do with the glory of God. This is why we must go back to the old and truth-driven songs that we used to call “hymns”. It is also wise to have simple, easy to sing songs that are known by the majority of people at your church so you can sing with them (avoid new songs or hard language songs). A praise & worship team (choir)’s duty is to worship with God's people, not to perform or sing for them. In most church services, if you were to accidentally pull the plug off all the sound system, lo and behold, the congregants are not singing at all! Why is this so? Because they have been trained to watch other people worship for them. That is bad enough. If there are instruments in the church, their volume must not exceed the voices of the people. Instruments are there to aid (help) the singing, they are not the primary focus of worship. How sad that Mr. Keyboard has in many ways become the main actor of the Sunday gathering? We all know that this “enjoyment of the keyboard” is more of fleshly excitement than it is spiritual joy in the Lord. This is exactly what worldly concerts do. We must all strive to make our worship services more like heaven as much as God enables us, not more like the world as much as our flesh wants. There are some Churches that even go as far as inviting worldly musicians to perform at their church services. I have one name for such: worldly churches.
Your practical life
As we saw at the beginning that worship is primarily not music but every thought, word and deed that gives glory to the Lord is considered worship. For example, a husband is worshipping when He is loving His wife as Christ loved the Church, a factory worker is worshipping when He is obeying his paymaster and a child is worshipping when he is respectful to his parents. Whatever we do in church in the name of worship must be just the tip of the iceberg compared to what we do at home and in private. Pure hypocrisy is when you loudly sing “hallelujah” in church only to go out and live the very opposite. For a start, the church must make sure that those who are chosen to lead the service are proven born-again believers whose lives exhibit fruits of salvation. Do not ever attempt to do anything in the name of God, later on, worship, if you know that you are not right with God.
Dear ones, I long for the day when we all learn that we do not worship God because we are doing Him a favour nor do we praise Him as a means of impressing Him. Instead, because the Almighty is holy, powerful and self-sustaining, He commands us to worship Him. This is the great duty of all creatures, especially considering what He has done for us on the Cross. This is the end.
Give unto the LORD the glory due to His name;
Worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness - Psalms 29:2
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