Worship is not a song or a mood, it’s a lifestyle

Worship is not a song or a mood, it’s  a lifestyle.

Sometimes the song leader comes up and says "let's be in the attitude of worship'. It somehow connotes that worship is something we can turn off and turn back on whenever we please. It also sounds like a thing of convenience. In fact, many think that worship is slow paced music while praise is fast tempo music. In actuality, worship is neither a mood or a pace of the music. It is way beyond that, worship is a countenance towards life. I did some research on what worship means and I was able to find some definitions:

• To value and treasure God above all things
• To show strong feelings of respect or admiration
• To regard God in all we do
• To place God in top priority

We can see that none of the above words mentioned anything about music or switching moods. They are all focused on "God above all things". This means that in all that we do, we must express our love and reverence for God. That is what worship means.

True worship is not dependent on what God does for us. We worship from a place of deep acknowledgement of the supreme being God is. Not for providing our daily needs but for who is his. This is why worship to me is a lifestyle. We can't go about acknowledging God in a manner that is only dependent on what he does, that is not worship. So what if he does not give you what you ask for, will you act as though he is not valuable to you or omnipotent? When worship becomes a lifestyle whether he answers our prayers or not, it helps us consistently acknowledge God's supremacy over everything.

You are probably thinking "Bibi, does this mean that I don't really worship when I sing in church?". Absolutely not, there are expressions to worship and I'd try to talk about some of them to the best of my ability as inspired by the Holy Spirit. However, we must remember that True worship is our countenance towards God, the posture of our heart and spirit towards him.

Expressions of worship

1. Happy Songs

Psalm 100:2 Worship the LORD with joy; come before him with happy songs!

The beautiful worship session in the church or gathering of saints is an expression of placing God above everything. At the moment where everything diminishes and the might of God is all that we focus on. Be it with our hands lifted up or with our legs tapping to the beat, we are releasing happy songs that acknowledge God for who he is and his supremacy over the whole world. Worshipping God with happy songs is an expression that should not be limited only to the house of God. Let's worship his majesty in our homes, in our cars, in our spirits. Worship God with happy songs.

2. Priority

Deuteronomy 11:6 Do not let yourselves be led away from the Lord to worship and serve other gods

I have an unpopular opinion about what other gods in this context can mean. They can be things that we give a higher priority than God consciously or unconsciously. Things like our life partners, food, money, football, makeup etc. Take an inward look and analyse what are top priorities to you. You can also look at how many hours of the day you spend doing certain things and check out what you spend the longest hours on. Are they things that put God first. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying we should spend all the time in prayer and in the word. But are the things we spend the time to reflect the respect and admiration of God?

3. Lip service

Matthew 15:8-9 (NIV) These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules
Are we saying we worship God with our lips but our hearts could not care less about putting him in top priority? We can talk all we want about worshipping God but does it come from where it matters the most, our hearts? You can sing the most melodious worship song to God and your heart does not even know who God is? Worship is more than what we say or do, where it stems from is very important.

4. Living Sacrifice

Romans 12:1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God-this is your true and proper worship.
True worship is a matter of the heart also expressed through a lifestyle of holiness. Our lives have to express the splendour and beauty of God. Also, it has to express how submitted we are to God in our acts to ourselves and others. Let everything we do with our bodies demonstrate that God is our treasure. Let everything we do honour God.

5. In spirit

John 4:24 God is Spirit, and his worshippers must worship in the Spirit and in truth

Man is a spirit, that has a soul and lives in a body. Our bodies are nothing but our domicile on this earth. It like our passport to dwell on earth. We are made in God's image (spirit). Our spirit is our real self. Worship must come from our true self and not inspired by the external. We don't need the song leader or pastor to help you kickstart the worship process. Yield to the holy spirit inside of you to help you burst out in true worship from the real you. It the Holy Spirit that helps us offer that acceptable worship. Holy Spirit can help us worship even when our body does not feel like it, stay yielding in 2019.



With all I have said, I will like to re-emphasize that the pressure is not on us to offer true worship to God. In the place of staying in prayers and yielding to the Holy Spirit, these things begin to come effortlessly to us. It becomes our natural state, our lifestyle.

Remember, worship is an experience of the heart. If it does not come from within, it is vain. We can sing with the best voice and our worship can still be vain. I pray that our view of God continually amaze us. I pray that we will never get to that stage where we lose our wonder of the beauty of God.

Here is a pretty amazing worship song that I love, check it out.

"Many Spirit-filled authors have exhausted the thesaurus in order to describe God with the glory He deserves. His perfect holiness, by definition, assures us that our words can't contain Him. Isn't it a comfort to worship a God we cannot exaggerate?" - Francis Chan

With love,
Bibi.

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