Worship - Part One

When I hear the word worship, I immediately think of Sunday morning praise and worship time. How I love getting together with other believers to sing His praises! The only thing is, I don’t have that right now in my life... I’m teaching Sunday school! While I try to squeeze music into my very packed lesson when I can, somehow corralling 4-8 preschoolers while singing “This Little Light of Mine” is NOT my idea of worshiping the Lord!

So, if I know what worship ISN'T for me, do I know what it IS? I began to ask myself, “What does it mean to worship, and is it important to God?” Immediately, I turned to my Bible Software program and typed in the word “worship”. Here are a few interesting observations from my initial study:

The concept of worship is mentioned 1,329 times in the Bible. I think that fact alone means worship is important to God!

Worship is tied to something or someone – ideally God. There are many verses throughout the Old and New Testament that speak not only of worshiping God, but of NOT worshiping other gods or idols. Consider the following well known verses, which begin what we refer to as the Ten Commandments: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them…” (Exodus 20:1-5a)

Worship can be an immediate or continuous response. Take for instance, the disciples response to Jesus’ ascension into heaven. “And they, after worshiping Him, returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple praising God.” (Luke 24:52-53)

The most surprising thing I found when studying about worship is that many of the verses listed didn’t even have the word worship in them! Words that you often hear in Christian circles - prayer, sacrifice, serve, remember, and bow down, were all part of this word study search on worship. We’ll talk more next time about how each of these words can relate practically to living a life of worship.

I encourage you to spend some time this week considering what your definition of worship is. Whatever that definition is, take time to worship God this week!