Worship, Courage, and Fear
“Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” Hebrews 4:16 “Sing with your head up, with your eyes closed; not because you love the song, but because you love to sing.” – Aaron Marsh.

It is so very easy to be swept away by sound, smell, sight, and taste. It is so very convenient to let the music worship for us, and it is so common to only worship when we feel swept away. It takes much more courage to maintain a spirit of worship, regardless of what we hear, smell, see, or taste. We maintain this spirit of worship when we don’t like the music that’s being played, and we worship God anyway. We maintain this spirit of worship in the monotonous, gray periods of life, when nothing seems to sweep us away. We maintain this spirit of worship in the bitter cold, in the pools of blood, and in the wells of despair that inevitably come alongside the extraordinary joys and miracles of love.
Along with the courage of discipline, is the courage to overcome fear in worship. The fear that we’re not worthy to approach God, and the fear that he won’t accept us if we do… the fear that God only lovingly sweeps us away now and then, and that he isn’t present in the terrible or the terribly mundane… and the fear that God is the one who causes or allows unspeakable pain to occur in our lives. There’s also the fear of public worship, which is actually the fear of other people and what they will think/do. The spirit of worship must persevere, and overcome these things.

When maintaining this lifestyle/discipline, we can transform simple daily activities into prayerful acts of worship. The sunrise is no longer a routine start to the day, it is a miracle of God’s glory which we can be thankful for (and which would be sorely missed if it didn’t come tomorrow). Our friends and family are no longer the people who simply put up with us, they are the way that God hugs us and cooks dinner with us. Our physical and emotional wounds are no longer pointless pain, they are opportunities to collapse in our Father’s arms and receive his comfort and healing. A good indicator of how much you worship is by taking a look at when you choose to worship and when you choose not to worship. Part of that spiritual inventory is assessing the parts of your life that you feel should not worship God.

We get tricked into believing that God only knows the things that we tell him, and that he only exists in the places that we’re comfortable with. The truth is that he knows it all, and that nothing in any part of our lives should stop us from worshiping God. We try to lock God out the places where we sin, and in particular, the places where we want to keep sinning. We see God as the Divine Party Crasher, because surely we can’t worship God when we’re drunk… or can we? There is a mysterious hierarchy of sin that we’ve created, where some things are perfectly acceptable (taking the Lord’s name in vain, lying, coveting, etc..) while other things are abominable and intolerable (adultery, murder, etc..). We forget that we are all sinners, and that Christ died for us while we were sinners, and that we always worship God as sinners (only made worthy by the blood of Christ). We shouldn’t allow sin to hinder our ability to worship God, on the contrary it should actually compel us to come home (like the Prodigal Son) to find our Father running out to meet us.

Similarly, we shouldn’t allow our feelings to hinder our ability to worship. It is very encouraging to strongly feel God’s presence, but we cannot and will not always feel his presence. To overcome sentimentality in worship is to praise God when he does not appear to exist at all, or when it seems that he has abandoned us. We must adhere to our faith, and adhere to the Truth that God will never leave us or forsake us. This is one of many applications of worshiping in “Spirit and Truth”, as we’re told to do. Being sensitive to the Spirit is sometimes a natural gift given to certain people, other times it requires a little more discipline in learning how to listen to God; either way, worshiping in the Spirit is a wonderful thing. The Spirit is the true worship leader anyway, and we are simply the mouthpiece. Although, our senses can deceive us (and evil can deceive us) so when we cannot feel the “Spirit” we rely on the “Truth”: that we are redeemed through Jesus Christ and he is worthy of our praise. To worship in Truth is to praise and glorify God solely based on faith and not on feelings, fully relying on God faithfulness even when he seems to be absent. The important thing to remember is to worship both in the Spirit (being moved/inspired by God) and in Truth (relying on your knowledge of God). Sometimes people can get in the habit of just choosing one of these styles and neglecting the other. We shouldn’t only worship when we feel the Spirit move, but we shouldn’t desensitize ourselves to the Spirit either… there needs to be a balance of the two, so that worship can always be present.