What am I really expecting from worship?

So there’s a Cody Carnes song called Nothing Else. Cody Carnes is one of my favorite musicians right now because so much of what he sings about seems to really speak directly into my heart and my life. There’s a line this song that says “I’m not here for blessing, Jesus you don’t owe me anything and and nothing you can do I just want you.” It’s a really amazing line that sums up a really big point about the ‘why’ of worship.

Worship is not done so we can get something out of it. Sure we develop deep connection through worship but it’s not done for my purpose. We worship because someone is worthy of worship. We worship because God is God. That’s quite a statement if you think about it. The worship of God is not something that is done off the cuff. It’s not done because someone told us we should, but rather is based on the creditials that God alone holds: eternal, all powerful, all knowing, etc. These three attributes alone already make God wholly different than anyone you or I has ever met. And if we worship God as God then I’m not here for myself. I’m not worshipping for myself. Worship is not an act done to acquire favors and perks.

But if God is God and I worship him then that very worship does not change regardless of my situation or circumstance. Maybe it changes how the enacting of my worship looks and maybe it changes the emotion that I feel within that worship and the way that I express it, but it still never changes the fact that I worship because he is worthy of worship. God is the central figure of my worship…not myself.

Worthy of worship is an interesting concept as well. Who is worthy of worship? Honestly we worship a lot of things. We worship musicians and athletes and public figures. We worship significant others and people of higher reputation. But are they really worthy of worship? It’s important to define worship in this moment. Worship is living out the greatness of that which we worship. Worship is something that we dedicate our lives to. Worship is something that we allow to guide who we are and what we do. 

So if I live in worship to God then I’m not here for myself. I’m here on behalf of myself but I am here to worship and honor God as someone who deserves to be worshiped. If he acts on my behalf he does it out of love, not out of obligation or convincing or some hidden meter that continues to rise every time I do something out of worship for God where once I hit a certain level I get something else, some treat. That’s not how it works. Honestly if it did there’d be a lot more people that worshipped God…but that’s really worshipping our own wants and needs-so not really worship at all.

Here’s the deal, honestly very easy to type these things and it’s easy to understand those things but it’s very hard to live that way. How often do we wonder why God won’t do something for us; why he won’t change the circumstances and the scenarios just because we are good Christians and just because we worship him. This doesn’t mean that circumstances won’t change and it doesn’t mean there aren’t things going on but part of worship is admitting that God understands more and knows more and is in control of more things than we are. Let’s face it, that’s why we come to worship him. But there are moments where we turn it on his head and we think we know what we want and we know what’s best and so we say “do this” and “do that” and when God doesn’t obey us we wonder why he seems absent.

He’s not absent, he’s never absent. Just based on his omnipresence he can’t possibly be absent. But we often mistake his non-action based on what we want for his absence. Or even we mistake it for his punishment. Punishment was taken on the cross, God’s absence and distance was taken on the cross.

To miss that fact is to turn God into something that he is not into miss why we worship. Do we want a certain job, do we want things to follow certain way, do we want our children to have certain advantages? Absolutely. Does that mean that coming and worshiping once a week at church or doing the bare minimum, or even the absolute maximum in worship, means that God is going to automatically grant our wishes. No.

We worship because we recognize that God is far more than we could ever even imagine. Our belief in God and the attributes that make him God drive us to worship because we recognize the amazingness of God. Not because it’s how we get what we want.

But it does change what we want…and that’s a post for another time.