The first is clearly more "spiritual" than the latter, but what does that genuine spiritual experience look like in our lives, especially when everything we experience gets filtered through our physical bodies. Also, to clarify I'm using a very narrow definition of worship here, referring to praising God through song whether it be as a church or individually. Worship entails significantly more than that but that was the aspect of worship providing the confusion for me.
There have been plenty of times I can point to in the past 10 years where as worship concluded I had this feeling that worship was awesome, but then I realized that that "awesome worship" feeling came at times when I just heard music I loved and the mix was perfect and the mood was set just right. Not that worship can't happen in those places, but I began to wonder if my worship experience was really just manipulating my mind and emotions through music, a beautiful tool that ties so closely into our hearts that it carries a lot of power, regardless of "spiritual" content.
The last few months have been a battle to get to the bottom of this. How do I know when I'm enjoying God's presence or deep and worship versus just enjoying an awesome groove??? As soon as a that uncertainty in my worship surfaced my worship dried up, and I could hardly participate in worship or music at all.
Frustrating to not know the difference between God and music. Were all those times just resting in the presence of God, really just times of being massaged by a rhythm that hit the spot?
So here's what I'm thinking. Worship can manifest in any time, any place, and can be expressed through so many mediums. One of the most awesome settings is in a community of people who have devoted all they are to Jesus Christ. So we gather and use music, as a powerful mode of expression to worship our Lord. A great idea in principle but here's where I started messing it up.
I roll in Sunday morning and I "arrive at worship," or I pull out my guitar to do a worship song. As I waltz into that worship setting I enjoy some music and then it's done and I wonder if I really encountered God or not. Now here's what needs to change.
I need to go through my days recognizing God everywhere. There are times when I see him inspire people to awesome things. There are times when he opens up opportunities for me to represent him clearly. He gives revelations of how good he is, and how he's blessed me. I need to think on those things, to dwell on those things, and to let those things build up. When the goodness of God begins to overwhelm me (which should really happen on a much more regular basis), I can use music, in my room or corporately, to express that joy, and that passion, and that thanksgiving. The music just becomes the best medium for expressing the emotions within, and not a medium for attempting to manipulate them into feeling like God is good. God makes himself good. The music doesn't do that. Music just happens because God IS Good.
2 comments:
well put brother
well put indeed.
yeahh agreed.
like the last paragraph. we've gotta have a reason to worship, otherwise it doesn't mean much.
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