Worshiping ‘Worship’ or ‘God’? – Part 2 – by Kiran Suryawanshi

“You must not worship the Lord your God in their way.”       Deuteronomy 12: 4

It is good and right for us to use all the material advancements that we can get hold of in order to improve the quality of our worship, but the drawback lies in us making these the center of our worship, while losing sight of our Source who should be the object of our worship.  When we get so caught up with the mechanisms and styles of ‘their worship’ that’s when we start ‘worshiping worship’ instead of worshiping God Himself.  We should not mistake worship as an event or mere experience just to get the ‘feel-good’ factor.  After a worship meeting, if the youth get more influenced by and attracted to the worship leaders or their musical experience; it only goes to show that these have become idols who begin to take the place of God in their lives.

When worship leaders fail to divert due glory and praise to God, the youth who idolize them are in great danger of accepting and practicing ‘their way’ of worship and worshiping the creation rather than the Creator (Romans 1:25). Our God is a jealous God who will not share His glory with another. When we keep robbing God’s glory, we end up losing the anointing and ultimately destroy ourselves, though we may still continue using our gift. King Saul is a perfect example of one who walked in disobedience, yet remained king till he died.  God anointed Saul as king when he was little in his own eyes, 1 Samuel 15:17, but when Saul repeatedly disobeyed God’s commands and thus became big in his own eyes, it was heard by Samuel that Saul had gone to Carmel to build a monument unto himself, 1 Samuel15:12.  Thus, began the shift from worshiping God to worshiping ‘self’.  So the Spirit of God left Him and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him. Eventually, the anointing was transferred to the young shepherd boy named David (1 Samuel 16:13,14).

God does not need us to certify Him as God by our worship. The fact remains that He is God and it is we who are the ones who benefit when we worship Him.

God weighs our ‘why’ before weighing our ‘what’ when we worship.  In Deuteronomy 31:21, God said to Moses, ‘ I know the intention of these people…” predicting the real intention behind their worship. So we see that God primarily examines the motives and intentions of our hearts in all that we seek to do for Him and we will do well to examine ourselves in this way too.

When we keep busying ourselves with many ‘works’ and ‘activities’ for the Lord without setting our heart’s attitude right with God and man,  we must realize that we are standing  on dangerous ground. All that we do for God must originate from Him, with right motives and as a result of an intimate relationship with Him. It is not God’s desire that we struggle to do His work in competition with each other, but instead we need to be led by the Holy Spirit, for only those who are so led are called the ‘sons of God’ (Romans 8:14). When our motives and attitudes are cleansed, nothing that we do will be ‘insignificant’ or ‘meager’ in God’s eyes, even if people don’t appreciate us.  We need to examine our hearts honestly; especially during those times that God seemingly blesses the work of our hands, in order to find out whether our driving force is only to overtake others.  If this is so, we might as well realize that we are rushing speedily towards God’s disapproval.

Dear beloved let us, therefore, come to the Cross once again to understand ‘His way’ of worship. The Father heart of God is still seeking for true worshipers who willingly say ‘Lord, not my will but Thine be done’. We can safely conclude that obedience to God’s Word is the highest form of worship for God delights in obedience more than He does in sacrifice (1 Samuel 15:22). Let us seek to be among those who live a life of continuous repentance and worship God in the beauty of holiness till the end of our days on earth.

Blessings !

(Received inputs & corrections from elder believers)