Worship

Sometimes there are particular lines, or a few words, that just move you. It's at those times that you stop being cynical and you stop thinking you have everything figured out because something so simple as a few words sung in praise of God can overwhelm you with...I guess a glimpse of truth, or of eternity.

I have a few favorites. Just little excerpts of songs that I can't sing without feeling like God's really grabbing me in a very real way. Here are several of them...

- Oh to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be.

- No guilt in life, no fear in death, this is the power of Christ in me.

- You did not wait for me to draw near to you, but you clothed yourself in frail humanity.

- Let thy goodness like a fetter bind my wandering heart to thee -- prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.

- Though there's pain in the offering, blessed be Your name.

- Heart of my own heart, whatever befall, still be my vision.

- This is all my hope and peace, nothing but the blood of Jesus, this is all my righteousness, nothing but the blood of Jesus.

- And I will seek You in the morning, and I will learn to walk in Your ways, and step by step, You lead me, and I will follow you all of my days.

- Lord, You are more precious than silver...and nothing I desire compares with You.

- Don't let my vision die, I'm calling out, light the fire again.

- Naked and poor, wretched and blind I come. Clothe me in white so I won't be ashamed.

- And I'll sing Your praises forever, deeper in love with You.

- Broken, I run to You, for Your arms are open wide. And I am weary but I know Your touch restores my life.

On a side note, I have a hard time connecting with nature songs ("Running through the forest, dive into the lake") or "breathe" songs ("This is the air I breathe," and many others). Usually I end up just not singing them because I always end up thinking, "What am I even saying."

I've had some really good times of worship this year. One time it was a group of guys, and Mithun, who sings really loudly and unashamedly, and there came a moment where I thought about the way we were responding to our awesome Creator and God and thought, "This is it. This is what the human voice was created for." What an amazing thought, and how humbling to realize how often I use my mouth in a useless way that doesn't glorify God. How stark the contrast between the amazing truth of worship and the trivial things I babble on about on a daily basis. It really drives home the point of James 3 in a way that I hadn't considered before -- what do I use my tongue for?

Worship really is a recognition of truth. From time to time, someone will ask, "If people are created just to glorify God, then isn't that really selfish and petty of God just to make lesser beings to sit around and tell Him how great He is all day?" I think everyone has that thought at some point or another. It took me a while to realize that worship, pure unfettered worship, is the only right, natural response of a being like you and me to an infinitely vast, infinitely good being like God. It is the only way we can approach Him in light of who He is, and anything else is deception or falsehood. To not worship Him is to be dead wrong about the way things are -- you and I are really small and God is really big. It boggles my mind how much of my day is spent outside of a state of worship. It reminds me of the time I sat on top of a 12,444 ft mountaintop in the middle of an incredible wilderness and played cards with some friends because we'd gotten bored of the view and thought we'd seen it all. Stupid.

God also has used worship to show me His heart for His children. My freshman year, I was conversing with a guy on the beach about the gospel and made some headway, but later that night, I found myself in an amazing time of worship at a large group meeting and God's presence was really there. I can't describe what that's like. It's better than having VIP seats at a Neil Diamond concert, which I've definitely done, which was awesome in itself. But I think God really told me that night, "How much better would this be if that guy from the beach were here worshiping next to you?" What a blessing we have in God, and in the joy He gives us, and in our worshipful relationship with Him, and how deserving He is. How stingy I am not to think of others. It's like me eating Thanksgiving dinner and everyone else sitting around hungry with empty plates because I'm too self-centered to share.

That time of worship changed how I looked at God and how I looked at life. Worship is what the human voice was made for, and it's what we're made for too.