My boss, the Dean of Students, is teaching Personal Spiritual Development at Cascade this semester. I went and sat in on his class today. He was talking with them about worship. He threw out the question "Why do you worship?". The class was sitting in silence. It wasn't silence out of reverence for God or thinking about really good times of worship. He then through out the statement "I think you're silent right now because you don't have any idea why you worship". I think I have to agree with him. I think that I am starting to develop a list of reasons why I worship but I haven't always been in that place...you can't answer with "because"...
Why do you worship?
7 comments:
I worship because Christ died for me, because He is ALWAYS faithful and because I love Him.
What a great question. My very first thought was "because it is the one time of the week when I have absolute peace..." But that is not entirely true, for two reasons. The first reason is that I only have absolute peace in worship when I fully submit to Christ and concentrate fully on him, it's not a given. The second reason that statement is not true is that luckly, it's not one time a week, but many. It can be a five second prayer while I'm in the shower, or on my commute while I sing in the car. Praise God my worship time is not once a week!
What Bill suggested in his class yesterday was when we are about to attend corporate worship, we should be preparing ourselves beforehand and not just show up in the rush of getting out of bed, getting ready and barely dragging our feet in the door, and expect to be met there by God. He spoke specifically to the students about chapel (because they all like to complain about it). He suggested to them that if they went in with the excitement of the opportunity to worship and got to chapel PREPARED to meet God there that it might actually happen. I think its a very important question to ask ourselves.
I believe we worship what is most important to us. The silence of those students scares me for the fear that perhaps God isn't most important to them, but then I think of myself and the things I put stock into. Thank God that He accepts our meager offerings, and that He renews us to give more.
I think what Bill presented may be a reality check for all of them that there may be lots of things standing in the way of living for and with God. That may be what most of them need to hear.
I worship because I have encountered God and that is the only response. I wish I encountered the presence of God more often . . . but I'm really good at hiding. When I hide from God, I can't worship.
...because...
you are annoying Big Mike!
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