I will give you all my worship
I will give you all my praise
You alone I long to worship
You alone are worthy of my praise
God is the Great Artist. We are the works of His hands. We live to offer Him worship. We are like paintings on the wall. We live to beautify His world with our offerings of praise.
But too often our praise has become stagent. We are like rocks. We sit and listen, we look to be entertained by the smiling man in a suit, be it preistly vestigages, fine armani, a clown costume, or robes and collar. We wait for the performance. We watch worship happen before us. If we take part at all it is by reading along, or perhaps mumbling the words to songs we never think about, we never reflect on, we rarely let seep into our being and permiate our souls. In the current paradigm praise has become a spectator sport. God didn't intend for that to happen. We weren't made for that. We were made to actively worship the Living Lord.
1 Shout with joy to God, all the earth!
2 Sing the glory of his name;
make his praise glorious!
3 Say to God, "How awesome are your deeds!
So great is your power
that your enemies cringe before you.
4 All the earth bows down to you;
they sing praise to you,
they sing praise to your name."
Selah
Active worship is the push to get involved, be engaged, into transforming ones life into the worship service. I wish to address four facets to active worship: participation, movement, intigrating the fine arts into worship, silence and praise habit.
Participation
Active worship seeks to actively engage all those who are present in the worship experience. It challenges the model of performer and audience. No longer is the choir singing for the church to hear. People aren’t at church to be entertained. The whole congregation becomes the choir, present to fully stand and glorify God with voice and instruments and movement. It is no longer acceptable to separate the minister in such a manner that it is clear he or she is doing the worship and the rest are there to watch. Worship leaders cannot function apart from those who are being led. It is not the praise team on this side of the line and the spectators on the other. Church must transform away from the theater model, where people stand outside in line to have a comfortable seat and enjoy the show. The congregation itself becomes the work of art, offering praise to the true audience, the Almighty Himself.
This notion shouldn't seem all that unfamiliar to us. In fact, living praise is our destiny. It is foretold time and time again in the Bible that the day is coming when all of creation becomes living praise. Every tree, every flower, every beast on land and in sea, they all shall rise up and offer praise. A sneak preview of this truth is available to us now as believers.
The Flowers of the fields are dying to be heard
The trees of the forest start singing
And all of the mountains with one voice
Are joining the chorus of this world
Worship isn't just something we choose to do on Sundays. In his book God in the Flesh Don Everts says the following:
This is our eternal destiny, after all: to yell about how cool God is. One day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess, right? And when we praise him now, when we sing about how cool and different and amazing he is, we are practicing. We are actually getting to speak words upon this earth that have no shadows about them. What a rare treat that is! When we praise, we speak utter truth. We breath reality.
p. 62
Movement
I have been in congregations that literally expressed concern for the longevity of the carpeting once elders witnessed free-flowing, active worship in their church. A janitor asked, “Wont all that jumping around wear out the flooring?”
This behavior was seen as too undignified for church. But let us for a moment examine the word UNDIGNIFIED as it appears in the Bible. It appears in the story of King David. He, after much fighting to secure his kingdom, at last feels it is time to bring the ark of the covenant into Jerusalem, this is a big deal, a piece of his life long dream. Here's the text from the bible:
David, wearing a linen ephod, danced before the LORD with all his might,while he and the entire house of Israel brought up the ark of the LORD with shouts and the sound of trumpets. As the ark of the LORD was entering the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul watched from a window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD, she despised him in her heart."
When David returned home to bless his household, Michal daughter of Saul came out to meet him and said, "How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, disrobing in the sight of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would! David said to Michal, "It was before the LORD, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when he appointed me ruler over the LORD's people Israel--I will celebrate before the LORD.
I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor.
David's response is one which really makes my heart sing. David is not saying "look at my awesomeness, I am massive... I am a god amungst men!" No, he isn't tearing away at the normal bounds of behavior because he is proud of himself. He is reveling in the glory of the Lord. What David is saying is that he understands that the rules of propriety that govern societal norms are insignificant when compared to the relationship between a man and the Creator. So before God, his heart soared, he leaped and sang and worshipped even at the risk of foolishness becuase he was doing it before God, not his fellow mortal onlookers.
So we may be just as undignified for God, not to impress our neighbors, not to shock onlookers, but in compusion with our heart's yearning to display before God our heart's desire to praise. We will be undignified, even in our own eyes, as we offer ourselves up to God.
David could not contain himself. The praise seeped from his body. He danced and pranced and leaped for joy.
The Arts in Worship
When we bring art and beauty into every facet of our lives, we aren't just honoring God. We reflect back into the world the art and beauty that is the Almighty. This isn't simply just incorporating art into our Sunday religious rituals. Altar Guilds are great. Adding the fine arts into service to engage all the senses is admirable and laudable. But active worship seeks to make the personal creation of art and beauty in your life one's primary meditation. When you do this you unveil or rediscover the states and qualities of the Infinite within oneself as well as outside of self in the world. By living the healing, empowering truth that everyone is creative and is an artist, you are worshiping the Original Artist at an intimate, heart to heart level. You are creating art for God, glorifying Him with your active worship, transforming your life into an offering for Him.
Silence
But Active Worship is more than just sing and jumping around. We can find active worship in an ironic act, sacrificing the voice altogether. Silence is another key to active worship.
The word selah is an ancient word for pause, rest. It's literally a time to stop the music, stop the responsive reading, stop the noise and silently mediate on the message just spoken. It’s a time to take the words and bring them into each person’s heart and intrapersonally internalize them, make them have personal meaning and allow for silent prayers to God. Silence often seems to be the time to space off, to turn off, to vegetate. But silence is vital to the active worship experience. In silence something is to happen actively. Silence, in other words, is a time to do something, to pray, to contemplate, to encounter and to be someone, the creature sill before the creator, the artwork before the artist, the pottery before the potter, It is to interact on the most intimate of levels, to stare the Creator in the face. Ironically, the moments of silence that we build into the emergent worship experience may well become the most engaging, most meaningful and most active participation. In silence, true worship is obtained.
Praise Habit
Ultimately, active worship strives to blur the line between worship and daily life, from religious ritual and daily routine. It is the transforming of one’s daily habits into praise habits, making life a work of art that is pleasing to the Almighty, a life that glorifies Him and honors Him. No longer is our religious obligations met by merely going to a church, sitting in a pew, throwing a few dollars into the offering plate and then watching the moral performance of a few. Life becomes the opportunity to live out the artistic potential woven into each of us, knit into every fiber of our beings by the Artist of Artists, Yahweh Himself.
Conclusion
Active worship is a key element of PEEW. Worship goes so far beyond singing. We aren’t just a choir for the Lord. In fact, active worship isn’t about merely using your voice in worship. The whole body must be engaged in worship. It strives to move beyond passive listen into offering one’s heart as a sacrifice. Engaging the participants at this level ultimately changes their lives. And that is what active worship is all about, becoming a work of art for the Lord, praising Him in new and fantastic ways that draw us up and offer us to Him wholy, where we are ever changed by his radiant grace.
No comments:
Post a Comment