Читать книгу The Art of Worship - Fred Bittner - Страница 6

Chapter 2: Practicing the Art of Worship

“Depend on it, my hearer; you will never go to heaven unless you are prepared to worship Jesus Christ as God.” (Charles Spurgeon)

Worship takes practice. How do we practice the art of worship? It’s not as though there is a formula for living a life of worship. There is no checklist where we can verify whether we have worshiped or not. In the very beginning, Adam was able to walk in the garden with God. They conversed, had fellowship, and had an intimate understanding of each other. Sin broke that bond and forever changed the relationship that humanity has with God.

Since the garden, God has been working to restore his relationship with us so that we may share heaven with him. However, we don’t have to wait until heaven to walk with Jesus. We can commit every aspect of our life to him as an act of worship. When we work, it should be an act of worship. When we play, it is worship. When we are alone, we worship. We do so because we are declaring how important God is to us in those moments. If we are doing something that we know God would not like, we are declaring that he is not all that important. If, on the other hand, we commit everything we do to the Lord, and consider it an act of worship, then people will see Christ living in us whether we say anything or not.

The story behind Matt Redman’s praise song, “The Heart of Worship,” helps to explain why the art of worship is at the heart of worship.

The song dates back to the late 1990s, born from a period of apathy within Matt’s home church, Soul Survivor, in Watford, England. Despite the country’s overall contribution to the current worship revival, Redman’s congregation was struggling to find meaning in its musical outpouring at the time.

“There was a dynamic missing, so the pastor did a pretty brave thing,” he recalls. “He decided to get rid of the sound system and band for a season, and we gathered together with just our voices. His point was that we’d lost our way in worship, and the way to get back to the heart would be to strip everything away.”

Reminding his church family to be producers in worship, not just consumers, the pastor, Mike Pilavachi, asked, “When you come through the doors on a Sunday, what are you bringing as your offering to God?”

Matt says the question initially led to some embarrassing silence, but eventually people broke into a cappella songs and heartfelt prayers, encountering God in a fresh way.

“Before long, we reintroduced the musicians and sound system, as we’d gained a new perspective that worship is all about Jesus, and He commands a response in the depths of our souls no matter what the circumstance and setting. ‘The Heart of Worship’ simply describes what occurred.”

When the music fades, all is stripped away, and I simply come / Longing just to bring something that’s of worth that will bless your heart… / I’m coming back to the heart of worship, and it’s all about You, Jesus

Redman remembers writing the song quickly in his bedroom soon after the church’s journey together, with no grand intentions, by any means, for it to become an international anthem. He viewed the words simply as his personal, subjective response to what he was learning about worship.

But when Matt shared “The Heart of Worship” with Pilavachi, the pastor suggested making a few small adjustments to the lyrics so any member of the church could relate to it as well.

Amazed by how God has since taken the song around the world for His purposes, the songwriter smiles in regard to his own lack of foresight. “It nearly didn’t go any further than my bedroom. But I love that…”8

When the music fades

All is stripped away

And I simply come

Longing just to bring

Something that’s of worth

That will bless Your heart

I’ll bring You more than a song

For a song in itself

Is not what You have required

You search much deeper within

Through the way things appear

You’re looking into my heart

I’m coming back to the heart of worship

And it’s all about You,

It’s all about You, Jesus

I’m sorry, Lord, for the thing I’ve made it

When it’s all about You,

It’s all about You, Jesus.9

As in the words of the song, we need to strip away the easy answers to worship, and start again from the beginning to build a perspective of worship. We build the foundation of worship by giving ourselves completely to God. The heart of worship is taking everything we do and making it about God. It is not about services and music, or even buildings. The heart of worship is living for God. When we live life as an act of worship, then the songs we sing and the music we share become worship as well.

So worship is not just what we do on Sunday. Worship is also what we do Sunday afternoon through Saturday. Our acts of worship through the week energize our fellowship on Sunday. Our life of worship makes Sunday meaningful. If there is no worship through the week, then Sunday may have some emotional meaning, but it will remain spiritually shallow.

The concept of worship through the week is one that must be clarified. In one of my early ministries, a certain young couple started coming to our church. We rejoiced when they gave their lives to Christ, and we were excited as they learned to walk with Christ. She was a stay-at-home mom and he was an employee at the local factory. To him, worship throughout the week meant that he carried his Bible and spent all of his time preaching to his fellow employees. This did not go over well as others had to take up the slack because he was not performing his duties. At one point, someone got tired of his preaching, grabbed his Bible, and threw it into the factory furnace.

Needless to say, he was confused about what it meant to practice the art of worship through the week. His words made no sense because he was acting as a bad friend, a lousy employee, and a terrible witness. He had to learn that acts of worship included being an exemplary employee, becoming a servant to his friends, and praying his way into their confidence. Once he learned what a life of worship was, he settled into a wonderful ministry at the factory.

The rest of this book is designed to help us understand how to expand our worship from Sunday to an everyday part of our lives. Art takes practice. Musicians will tell you that they became an overnight success only after years and years of obscurity. Artists painted over canvases that nobody wanted before they became famous. School bands sound horrible when they first pick up the instruments. But after practice, they hone the art of music and the results can be remarkable.

The art of worship also takes practice. We don’t all of a sudden decide that every aspect of life is now worship and expect it to work out. Israel practiced for forty years in the wilderness, and still struggled once they made it to the promised land. If we look at the book of Revelation, we see church after church that struggled with the art of worship. But do we give up on something because it seems difficult? No, we practice, fail, and learn from it so that we can be more successful the next time.

Each chapter helps us to view different aspects of life as acts of worship. Let’s take up the adventure and become artists in the ways of worship.

Try These Activities

• If you were going to get back to the heart of worship, what would you focus on? What are the distractors that have gotten in the way of this focus? How can you get back to the heart of worship?

• How can you do a better job preparing yourself to enter into worship? List three things you can and will do.

• If art takes practice, then what can you practice to make your worship a better experience?