Worshipping Worship

Note: This is a reprint of an article I posted on relevantmagazine.com earlier in my musings. Ponder away, my curious friends!


My name is Loren W., and I am a recovering worship-music-aholic.

There, I said it. They say that the first step to recovery is admitting that you have an addiction, so I took it.

I am one of those people who listen to music constantly-in the car, doing dishes, cleaning my room, cleaning my (gasp!) bathroom, pretty much anywhere I have a stereo available. Why? Because I…well, I don’t even think I know the answer to that anymore. I used to think it was because I loved music, but then I realized that everybody and their dead grandmother love music. It seems that no matter what style it is, music is playing everywhere all the time.

But is it taking up too much of our time?

That question came to me one day while I searched through my CD collection for the umpteenth time looking for something I wanted to listen to for longer than a few minutes. I began to realize that I really was not in the mood for anything that I had in my collection, not even worship music, not even the new Hillsong United CD. I began to ask myself, why, in all these 300 CD’s that I own, can I not find anything I want to listen to? As the answer began to emerge, it surprised me.

I was sick of music.

Don’t get me wrong, I love music, I was just dissatisfied. I wondered why, with all the good music out there, how can I not find anything I wanted to listen to at that moment in time?

It was because I had used music to try and fill up the hole inside that only God could fill. I was spending time with the music He created instead of the Author of it. I kept searching for more and more good worship music when I was really missing the whole point of worship.

Worship is a lifestyle, first and foremost. That sounds funny coming from a guy who grew up in a progressive church where dancing before God, praying in tongues, and getting slain in the spirit all while experiencing awesome worship were the norm. But that’s just what it was for me. An experience. I fell in love with His creation, music, and all our hopelessly inadequate attempts to come even a little bit close to describing how awesome our God is rather than getting to know the Author of it all.

I had been worshipping worship.

Wait a second, you’re thinking, I thought idolatry is wrong…how is worship wrong? The American Heritage definition of an idol is “a person or thing that is blindly or excessively adored.” Sounds like I had violated Exodus 20:1—“Thou shalt have no other gods [idols] before me.”

I thought worship brought me closer to God, but really, it is getting close to God that true worship comes forth. It is then that I can worship out of overwhelming desire to give back to God and proclaim His greatness with all that is within me rather than out of a desire to get the “warm fuzzies.”

Outside of church, I would put worship on wherever I was and seek to feel closer to God, but I rarely cracked open the Word or did much praying when the music was off. As I listened, I would get to the point that all I wanted to do was worship God. Then I would finish whatever I was doing, turn the music off, and continue about my day as if I hadn’t come close to touching the feet of God five minutes before.

So this dissatisfaction in music came down to a lack of a solid foundation in Christ. I knew God, but I did not really know who He was. Undoubtedly, I was a Christian in every sense of the word (saved, born again, yada, yada, yada) but I wasn’t a God-follower. In my mind, I was still in my shallow days as a newbie when I should realistically have been way deeper.

However, God didn’t look at it like that. To my shallow, finite mind, my lack of spiritual growth was a failure on my part, but in God’s perfect wisdom, He saw it as a catalyst to draw me deeper in my walk with Him, the opening of a new chapter in my life in Christ. I looked at it as a plateau that I needed to overcome, but God saw it as a stepping stone to greater things.

So in conclusion, I would like to say that things are peachy and I’m on cloud nine, but that just isn’t the case (surprise!). I still have the same problems as any other college twentysomething. The difference is I was open to a problem area in my life that God revealed. I still play and listen to worship music, but I also strive to end every night in the Word, meditating on it “day and night” so I can “carefully observe everything written in it” (Joshua 1:8), and ultimately live a lifestyle of worship.

Welcome to church, now sign this waiver...

"Church sues to avoid threat.""Lawsuit against pastor dismissed." These were all headlines from the "Faith" page of the local newspaper the other day. My heart was saddened to read of such things. It is so sad to see the church in America disobeying its own rules set forth in God's world. How are we supposed to be a light to the world when our own light isn't even shining brighter than the darkness? How are the lives of Christ followers showing Christ's love to a world who is in desperate need of something different? It is sad to see the disunity among the brothers and sisters of God's earthly kingdom.

In I Corinthians 6, Paul speaks strongly of the role of God-followers in a judgment role:"If any of you has a dispute with another, dare he take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the saints?"

Right there in black and white, it says that Christians are called to a higher standard. In the structure of the early church for which Jesus set the foundation, God creates the infrastructure for successful operation of His holy church. Notice, I said church, not churches. Denominations are man-made concoctions from those moments we thought we were divine. Last time I looked in the mirror, I saw a man who could stand to look a lot more like his Creator.

And perhaps so could many of us.

Maybe if we followed God's instructions for structuring church instead of trusting in our own understanding (Proverbs 3) we can avoid eventually signing a waiver just to enter the church.