What Is Worship?

Before we deal with the elements for corporate worship we must all be on the same page of what worship is. Many times when we think of worship we think of a service we were in that we experienced a moving of the Spirit of God; or maybe we think of a time alone where we sensed a real presence of God. These are great experiences of worship, but we must use the experience to point us to God. Oswald Chambers wrote this about experiences:

Experience is a doorway, not a final goal. Beware of building your faith on experience, or your life will not ring true and will only sound the note of a critical spirit.

As we seek to define worship it cannot include a simple experience, but go much deeper. It must go to God Himself. I believe Psalm 100 gives us a good idea of worship:

Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth. Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the LORD is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations. Psalm 100

So from Psalm 100 and other scripture, here is my simple definition of Worship: responding to God for who He is and what He does. We could dissect this definition, but you can do it on your own. The one thing I want you to see about worship is that it is God's idea and He initiates worship with us. Therefore worship is a response.

I have to be honest with you, many times in my life my first response is not worship. Rather it is selfish and sometimes angry. If I am to worship through my life, then I must check up on my responses. Wow! we are going deep here so I better stop for the day, but let's pick this idea up again tomorrow.