crocheting and cupcakes

There is so much more to corporate worship then I had thought. I had always been under the impression that we had a very open way of performing the act of worship- coming to church to sing, having the occasional special music from whomever could play an instrument or sing, and the choir. I hadn’t thought that there were any specific guidelines to follow or keep track of let alone having to worry about something like having my heart in the right place for worship.

One of the first things that blew my mind was that God wants us to prepare our hearts before worship. So often we come to church and begin to worship unknowingly, and the words we’re singing aren’t being sung in reverence and in worship to God. It’s like we’re singing empty words, unaware fully of their meaning because our hearts and minds are so away from where they should be..

Worship is something that as individuals we can pick how to worship, but that’s not the same as corporate worship. I can worship through the things I do every day- But in corporate worship we shouldn’t be doing something like crocheting or making cupcakes.   What we do to worship and glorify God in our time outside of church can be more open then the guidelines we have to keep in corporate worship.

There’s a difference between worshiping God and glorifying God. Worshipping God is putting God first, idolizing Him- being devoted to Him. While Glorification is to lift up, to honor. I can glorify God by creating something, but that’s not necessarily worshipping Him because more often then not we tend to end up idolizing the things we do to glorify Him more than we do to worship Him. One of the main things we need to realize for both worship and glorification is that it’s not about us - it’s about God. We’re so blinded by our culture that we’re supposed to only look out for ourselves and it’s all “me,me,me” and I think that carries over to our worship a lot of the time. We look at worship as a way almost to lift ourselves up, taking those opportunities that we’re supposed to use for God and turning them towards ourselves.

Lastly, I learned that if we do any of these wrong it makes God sad. I didn’t fully realize until this class that we have a God who’s sensitive and has emotions at the same time as being sovereign and all-mighty. If I don’t properly prepare my heart before worship to be focused on God then that’s something that makes God unhappy.

Worship is delicate and something that He cares about greatly but we’re so ignorant of how much we affect if we’re not doing it properly. It’s something to be done with great care for as much as we can. We’ll fall short, we always do- but that’s no reason not to try our absolute best to worship God in a way that’s pleasing to Him.