Worship

The following comments apply to chapter 14 of Batsell Barrett Baxter's book, The Family of God, a chapter on worship.

Christians get their detailed directions for worship from the pages of the New Testament.  Looking for the methods of worship Christians should use reveals five elements.  Listening to some teaching, participating in prayer, singing, taking part in the Lord's Supper, and giving of our means are the things we do over and over each week, because of what God shows us in the New Testament.

Sometimes we might get bored with the same routine or begin to question why we do this or that.  I just had a conversation about that with someone this week.  It has been a long time since Jesus made the great sacrifice for the sins of many.  We must ask ourselves whether Christian worship, as exemplified by the early church, is intact today and can remain that way as long as the earth continues.  That's the real question, and any thought about whether we are totally happy with worship or not can usually be traced to a temporary and insignificant longing on our part.

The way to avoid dissatisfaction with worship is to think not about ourselves and what we might long for, but about our Creator and what He wants from us.  If we look at it that way, the same five elements come alive and become a big part of our very purpose here on earth.  As we think about four and twenty elders bowing down to the Lord as depicted in Revelation and constantly praising His name, we can say that what God has given us to do in Christian worship, we are doing.

The Old Testament informs our approach to a greater extent than we might realize.  Isaiah 6 shows us first the magnificent greatness of God, then the utter sinfulness of man, then how man is able to be cleansed and made holy by God, and then how our cleansing gives us a purpose in serving God.  What we do in worship today in the Christian age all relates back to the principles found there.

Worship glorifies God and meets needs of ours such as the desire to identify with something greater than himself, the need to express gratitude and love, the need for something to soothe and calm our spirit, and the need for safety and security.

The book has a great list of definitions for worship, but we can sum up by saying that in worship we return to God what He wants from us, and in doing so, we define and understand who we are and whose we are.  Every Christian should be thinking about how he or she can keep worship intact for future generations, according to what God reveals in the Bible.  Maybe there are some details in which we have choices, but on the whole, once we are convinced that the survival of Christian worship is important, we as members of the Lord's church will work together to recognize it, uphold it, unify it, and give ourselves fully to it throughout our lives.