This is one of my favorite topics, and I am very passionate about worship and teaching children, from as early an age as possible, about worship. I want to encourage you to worship as a family as often as possible. Our lives are so busy and hectic that the opportunity to sit together for an hour as a family is cherished time. I know that kids are not always excited to go to worship, but I encourage you to persevere. We worship together as a family, and I confess that sometimes my kids are not fully participating in worship (unless you consider naptime a time of spiritual renewal). However, we are together, and they are seeing their parents set aside time to offer their time, attention and devotion (all terms we talked about last week) to God and then preparing to love and serve God for the upcoming week.
What is Worship?
Definition of Worship: reverence offered a divine being or supernatural power-also an act of expressing such reverence-form of religious practice with its creed and ritual-extravagant respect or admiration for or devotion to an object of esteeem.
The words that really stand out in the definition are reverence and extravagant respect. I love the idea of loving and honoring God extravagantly. For those who worship the Lord it is honoring God through our words, our prayers, our songs, our actions. It is recognizing that we can have an encounter with the living God.
People have worshiped God since the beginning of time. Cain and Abel brought to the Lord their best. Abraham built an altar to the Lord; Jacob set up stones to mark the place where he had an encounter with God; the Hebrews built a tabernacle for a place to worship the Lord; Solomon built a Temple; people gathered to honor and adore the One who had saved them from their enemies, the One who sustained them in times of trial and tribulation, the One who knew them intimately. Jesus worshiped at a synagogue.
Worship is "The Service" which means the work of the people. We are not supposed to be spectators or a passive audience, but instead we gather to collectively realize the presence of God in Christ, and to respond together in adoration, in sung praises, in prayer, hearing His Word, and in the dedication of our lives. Worship is the Christian community concentrating on God so that God's presence may overflow into the activies of our lives in the entire week to come.
What does our Worship look like?
Our worship is built around the worship experience of Isaiah found in Isaiah 6:1-8.
We have many of these same elements in our worship:
The Gathering
Praise, Adoration & Thanksgiving
Confession
Assurance of Forgiveness
Hearing the Word
Responding to the Word
Going forth into the world to spread the Gospel
Seasons of the Church Year
Advent: A time to hope and wait (purple)
Christmas: A time of celebration and rejoicing (white, read and green)
Epiphany: A time when we learn who Jesus really is (green, white and gold)
Lent: A time to think about our lives and Jesus (purple)
Easter: A time of celebrating the resurrection and new life (white)
Pentecost: A time of receiving the Holy Spirit (red and green)
Hymns in the Church
*Chosen each week with great care to convey and reinforce the message of the day.
* John Wesley, founder of Methodism, felt singing hymns was crucial to the life of the church. Check out Wesley's instructions for singing in the front of the Methodist Hymnal.
* Hymns point beyond themselves to a part of the Christian life.
*Composers, over many centures have written. Look at the bottom of the each hymn to see who wrote it, scripture verse and the tune.
*Charles Wesley, John's brother, wrote over 7,000 humns and poems.
Remember that you are not the eaudience but the one who brings to God in that hour who you are, your trust and need for God and your praise of God. You should leave resolved to go and be Christ's hands and feet, proclaiming the good News as you live your life day in and day out.
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