The Heart of Worship

I finally have internet back. And I'm all moved into the Evergrizzle. Just a quick thought: I really hate how I feel when I don't have the internet. It's a really helpless feeling. It's not like I was thinking "I NEED TO READ BLOGS!" or anything like that. I have stuff I still need to do for Oregon, and I've blown it off for the past couple weeks because I was moving and such, but when I can't do it, it drives me nuts.

Anyway, I've been meaning to blog on this for a while, but didn't know how, but I got a lot of insight this past Sunday. It's this concept of worship. I've been in pretty much every type of worship you can experience: the oh-so-popular evangelical David Crowder Band and Chris Tomlin worship, which, to me, has always seemed really self-serving. Don't get me wrong, I love Crowder, and Tomlin is okay, but there's this feeling in the air of the average Evangelical church that's either "wooo! I love God and I'm going to celebrate w/ all these people who are also celebrating!" or "God I'm so sorry I'm a sinner just like everyone else in this room -tear-" and everything in between. I guess I just see it as everyone kind of feeding off of each other. Maybe it lacks genuine emotion? But I would never make that assumption, because who can know someone's heart but God?

Then there's the rigid hymnals, which just screams religiosity. It reminds me of King of the Hill. We live no kind of faithful life, but damn it on Sunday God is the most important thing in the world to us, and we are to respectfully worship Him with nice calm hymns.

Then there's the crazy worship services where everyone is speaking in tongues, or shouting "AMEN!" and "YES LORD!" and such. Is there anything more self-serving than pretending to be speaking in tongues just so you feel closer to God?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not attacking these worship styles. There are absolutely people who aren't concerned with how they look while worshiping, or who have a great relationship with God, but feel they must have reverence while worshiping, or are actually being moved by the Spirit to edify or evangelize to people through tongues. But it's this concept of having the ulterior motive while worshiping that bothers me.

I went to Jess' church w/ her this past Sunday. It's in Arvada, and it's pretty small (only like 50 ppl, all young adults (on the sunday night service)) but honestly I don't think I've experienced realism like that in a long time. I do a lot of the same things I just described above. Rarely do I worship completely alone w/ God. I'm always worried about what I look like, or my mind wanders, or whatever. There were the people who stood in the aisles and prayer or whatever, but they didn't draw attention to themselves some how. I don't know how to explain it, they just seemed... honest.

After the sermon, while the second worship was going on (which was one of the best services I think I've ever been in, btw) I went over to talk w/ the pastor who spoke. We talked about a couple things, but mostly about finding this space between being the well-educated Christian and being the super duper spiritual Christian. I think I'm more educated in terms of Theology and Biblical knowledge than most Christians. But I'm not a well-educated Christian. Nor am I really spiritually driven. But I still am feeling empty when it comes to worship. A friend of mine went to an old church of mine once, and during worship, instead of singing, my friend drew. I have another friend who is writing his first worship song, and he's an amazing worship leader. A friend of mine from high school used to read his Bible during worship, and rarely ever sang. And I have quite a few friends who worship with all of themselves in the "conventional" way.

All of these are forms of worship. Still, I don't think I've found mine. I've definitely worshiped God before, and I've cried out to Him, but I've never found that... method. That one way of expression that I can identify w/ whenever I do worship. Maybe I over think this. Maybe those people are all just more expressive than I am, and I express myself in different, more subtle ways. But maybe my heart still hasn't found that... x factor.

One of my favorite professors, Aernie, was talking about Heaven one day in class. I don't remember how we got on the topic, but I remember him saying that Heaven is basically just basking in the presence of God. Basically God is so amazing, and we'll be in such close proximity to Him, that all we'll want to do is worship Him. Feeling His power, and love, and grace, and just knowing Him better than we ever could here on earth will do that to us.

To add onto that, if you look at all the guys whom God spoke to, look at their priorities. None of them were perfect by any means, but David for instance, wrote most of the Psalms, which are the most raw and emotionally driven verses in the Bible. This is a bit of a stretch, but if you take Song of Songs allegorically as the love between God and His bride (the church), you get this incredibly powerful poetry from Solomon, another guy very close to God. I was reading 1 and 2 Kings and Samuel not too long ago, and looking at the good kings, and how they changed the culture... that kind of motivation comes from a love of God.

I guess what I'm getting at is genuine passion for God is so rare. I do have friends who I know do have that passion, and you'd know it after one conversation with them. Other people are less obvious, but still no less passionate. I guess this is once again just another example of me not being patient with my growth and maturity, but it's hard to look at those people who have found their passion, and know that I don't have it. I don't want to be the intellectual, or the super-spiritual guy, I just want passion.