This past year, God has done more to work in my heart and mind on the topic of worship than at any other time in my life, and I can tell that He's still not done there. A while back, I was reading Praise Habit by David Crowder, and one main section in that book jumped out at me:"We naturally understand praise. As kids, we talk about our favorite toys; later we praise pizza and foot ball players. Kids just know how to enjoy things. They give themselves fully to whatever has a hold on them. Remember as children how we would fearlessly hold up our favorite toy and petition anyone who was in close proximity to behold it?
'Look, Mom, look!'
We instinctively knew what it was to praise something. It's always been in us. We were created for it. It's a part of who we are. As kids, we were fabulous at it. But as adults we become self-conscious and awkward. Something gets lost. i think we do it to each other. At some point, I hold the toy up exultantly and you comment that it looks ridiculous to hold the toy up in such a way. It's not a cool toy like I believed it to be. It is worn and tired, you point out. And we slowly chip away at each other's protective coatings of innocence until one day we wake up and notice we are naked and people are pointing. . .
Think back. Try hard to recall what praise in its undiluted purity felt like. When you would dance with your arms fully extended rather than elbows bent, folded closely to your person in such a guarded fashion. Remember how effortlessly we sang the praises of things we enjoyed? It was so easy and fluid and natural. What if this kind of praise freely leaked from us in delightful response to God? What if life were like that all the time. What if we were so moved by who God is, what He's done, what He will do, that praise, adoration, worship, whatever, continuously careened in our heads and pounded in our souls? What if praise were on the tip of our tongues like a loaded weapon in the hands of a trigger-happy meth addict and every moment might just set us off? What makes us think our time on earth should be any different? What keeps it from being so?"
1 comment :
Worship feels so dead sometimes in church..but you can't blame that on anyone...It's us. It's me. Pure, uninhibited praise between me and my Father is not simply standing there dully singing the words on the projector screen. It may be on my knees, prostrate...It may be with both my hands in the air. It is sometimes dancing. But all of this is when I'm alone with Him, not surrounded by others. And that shouldn't be. Why? I'm self-conscious and I allow that to creep into how I worship. Self-conscious that I'll lose the respect of those in the church. Is it something ridiculous to fear? No. Our church is quite conservative in their worship. Nothing wrong with that, as long as it isn't dead. But is it something I should let come between me and my Father in worship? Absolutely not.
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