Yesterday we talked about what in our own personal lives can hinder us from worshiping God. What kinds of things hinder the corporate congregation from worshiping God?
- First, if there are personal lids going on in the people of the congregation, it’s very difficult to worship corportately as a congregation. The personal lids need to come off first. How?
- By teaching: a lack of teaching on worship is a big lid to corporate worship. Especially if there are people within a congregation who don’t spend the time studying on their own, if there is no teaching on worship, it’s hard to know how to worship! We need to be continually bringing teaching on important subjects like this before the people.
- Lack of teaching on the centrality of Jesus Christ and the Cross. Many churches today have moved away from the authority and Lordship of Jesus and the importance of the Cross. As Luther said, it is impossible to worship God without Jesus.
- Lack of preparation and confidence. While God is the one who we ultimately boast in, there is a reason for Psalm 33:3 (play skillfully.) If the worship team is full of bad, poorly-prepared musicians, the people can get easily distracted. So, too, if the teaching is brought by a poorly-prepared teacher, the congregation can easily be distracted, or worse yet, taught incorrect things.
- Too much preparation and confidence. If there is a slick, perfected production but no humility and no attitude of engaging with God, but rather one of making the service the best production it can be, it’s difficult to worship. I am a firm believer in well-executed, well-produced services, but we can definitely be TOO excellent.
I’m sure there are many more. It is so important for us as worship leaders and teachers to make sure we do all we can to remove any hindrance to worship God from our congregation.
There are many things that hinder us from worshiping God, but sometimes we don’t even know what they are or what to do about them. For me, for a long time, it was a double life of saying and teaching one thing but living another, struggling with a particular sin. I still fight this battle often, but God has given me great resources to help. So what are some things that keep us from worshiping Him?
- First, unbelief. It is impossible to worship God if we don’t believe in Him. Shannon from 4whatitsworth has a great article about this.
- Second, a lack of understanding of who God is. Either we don’t know Him at all, or we’ve been taught incorrect things about Him. Solution: Get to know Him by reading and meditating on His Word daily, listening to messages and reading books on theology, and spending time with Him in prayer.
- Unconfessed sin. Once we get to know God we know that He hates sin. If we don’t confess our sin to Him and to others, it is very, very difficult to worship God rightly.
- Pet sin. Sure, we confess it, but we keep on coming back to it and justifying it. God says through the prophet Isaiah, and again as Jesus quoted this passage, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” (Isaiah 29:13, Matthew 15:8, Mark 7:6). This was a tough one for me for a long time, and I still battle with it, but as I mentioned, God has brought me a long ways and I’m so thankful for His correction and His grace!
- “I can’t worship when…” Perhaps you think you can’t worship God when a particular worship leader is leading or a particular song that you don’t like is sung. Or you think you can’t worship God when a particular song you like isn’t sung. This is a dangerous trap to fall into and it shows more about the attitude of your heart than your ability to worship. I struggled with this one for a long time as well until God has recently convicted me of this attitude and is helping me grow tremendously in this area.
I’m sure there are many other personal worship lids that we’ve dealt with. Care to share any and how God has perhaps freed you from them? Or maybe your struggling with how to break free. Leave a comment and we’ll help each other out.
The verse that this blog and ultimately my own life is based on is Romans 12:1-2. These verses are a great summary of how we are to offer our lives as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. Luther sums it up this way:
Where the true obedience of faith toward God is to be found, there everything one’s calling requires to be done is a holy and God-pleasing act of worship.”
Whatever your calling requires you to do, do it with your whole heart, as though working for Jesus and not man, and this is a holy and God-pleasing act of worship. What a way to live life!
This one’s a tough one to read, although it stands today as much as it did when Luther first made the statement:
He who falls from the grace of God upon the Law and imagines that he will be saved through works has as rough a landing as he who falls from grace into idolatry. For outside Christ there is nothing but idolatry and merely a false, imagined notion about God. If you want to be justified before God and saved by that sort of worship, it makes no difference whether you call its basis the Koran of the Turk, the decretal and command of the pope, or even the law of Moses.”
These are some strong words but words that we need to take to heart. So many religions require you to be “good enough” in order to ensure salvation. But how good is “good enough?” How will you ever know?
Even the law of Moses was commanded to be kept perfectly. But, “…whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” We can try and try and try to perfectly keep God’s commandments, but trying and trying becomes idolatry, an idol of work, according to Luther. We must rely on God’s grace in Jesus Christ, for Jesus was the only one that has kept the law absolutely perfectly, fulfilling the “good enough” that we could never become.
Praise God for His grace!
As we looked at Monday, the Word of God must be central in all times of worship. So, also, Jesus Christ must be the focus of all worship. This makes sense of course, because Jesus is the very Word of God Himself. (John 1) Let’s look at these great words from Luther:
“Knowing Christ and knowing the Father are tied together and are one and the same knowledge. This is why I have often said that the Father is known only in Christ and neither will nor can be reached and found, worshiped and invoked, apart form this Mediator.”
What a great promise and warning! Because of Jesus’ sacrifice, we can know the one true and holy and unreachable God of the universe. He has now become reachable to us through Jesus Christ. (1 Timothy 2:5). But what a great warning that we would never lose sight of the fact that Jesus is the only way to know God and the only way to be able to worship God. Without Jesus, it is impossible for us to draw near to God
