The Meaning of Worship

I am currently reading a book called "The Names of God" by Lester Sumrall in preparation (or rather anticipation) of doing a study on the names of God. While reading what he wrote about the name Elohim, I got a clearer vision of what worship is. I've often wondered why we worship the way we do and why it matters. And, to be honest, I've wondered about the necessity of worshipping in song, prayer, etc. on Sunday morning. I've always understood the purpose of spreading the Word, but why the worship? Lester Sumrall doesn't address this, but I'd like to share what I discovered.

On p. 52 of his book, Lester Sumrall writes, "the name elohim basically means 'something (or someone) that is worshipped.' The elohim were the things most revered and honored by ancient man." For clarification, Elohim is a name of God as well; He is the "One that is worshipped." But as I read this I began to think about the word elohim and us today. But before I get there, Mr. Sumrall points out something else on p.52: "Our modern word worship comes from the Old English word, weorthscipe, meaning 'to attribute worth' to something. That's what the pagan people did to their elohim; they believed idols had great power to influence their everyday lives."

When I combined the definitions for worship and elohim, I saw that the thing that we worship is the thing that we think has worth. Conversely, the thing that we think has worth is the thing we worship. I had often wondered how the hand-carved idol of the ancients had transformed into the modern day "idols" of money, career, beauty, etc. I mean, how did the word become applied to something more abstract in present-day terms whereas the idols of the Old Testament and New were clearly physical representations of some "god" or other. Now, this makes more sense.

Our business has gone through some tough times lately and not too many months ago, I had to come to terms with the very real possibility that we might lose everything, including our house. I began to take a good look at what our house and our possessions and our business really meant to me. I had to make the shift in my mind from "doing everything to keep them" to "being willing to give them up." It was upon coming to the realization that if we were reduced to nothing, with only our family and the clothes on our backs, we would still be blessed and God would still provide for us, that I realized the worth I had given all the things around me.

In other words, if we expect our work to provide for us, then we've given it worth over the God who provides. If we expect beauty or accomplishments to make us important to others, then we give them value over the God who gives us worth. If we expect our careers or activities to fulfill us and give meaning to our lives, then we give them worth over the God who fills us and gives our lives meaning. If we expect our home to protect us, our money to feed us and give us pleasure, our children to validate us, our entertainment to make us happy, etc., then we give all of these things a worth that should be given only to God. He is our "all in all." (Couples, are you paying attention? Spouses and lovers count here, too.)

I look around at my house, my children, and the beauty and bounty God has placed around me with new perspective. God wants us to enjoy everything He has given us; He wants that our "joy may be made full. (John 15:11)" I think He delights when we take pleasure in what He puts in our lives. Like a parent watching their child open presents on Christmas, I believe it gives Him joy when we appreciate what we have. The problem originates when we give the the things we enjoy a value they were never meant to have.

But what does this have to do with Sunday morning worship? I'm glad you asked. If the thing we worship is the thing we say has worth, then when we come together on Sunday morning to worship the One True God, we publicly and corporately proclaim His value. When we gather together to sing the songs and lift our hands and voices in praise, we are telling the world and each other that on this Sunday morning our God means something to us.

I am not an overly demonstrative person and I usually feel awkward to lift my hands in front of other people. But this past Sunday, I unhesitatingly declared that my God is the only One who has true worth and value. This realization I had of what it means to worship has given my Sunday morning more meaning. My prayer is that it does the same for some of you.

As a side note, the Hebrew word for worship means to bow down or prostrate oneself. It is the physical act of lowering oneself before the greatness of God. (Doesn't it make lifting the hands seem rather innocuous?)But the message is the same: God is worthy. Amen.

An immature generation

I created this blog to post in written form some work that I had done for devotional purposes. I kind of figured that if I had put that much work into research, then I would like a record of what I had done. Besides, I wanted to share what I had learned with some people who were unable to be physically present at the time. So "Watering the Vine" was created. But now that it exists, I haven't been sure what to do with it. I think I'm beginning to realize that what I have to teach doesn't mean as much when you separate it from who I am. I had originally thought that this shouldn't be about me like a personal journal, and I still think that, but I think it might be better if I somehow merge the two. So, with that in mind, I'm going to kind of merge the two. Not only will I post some research-type stuff, but also some musings and opinions. Like this...

God has brought people into my life that have helped me to see that we live in a very immature generation. By people, I mean friends, teachers, and authors. I have been reading a book (slowly for a long time now) about the Puritans. The author who wrote the intro said that the greatest thing we could borrow from the Puritans is their maturity. They were an extremely mature group of people. I'm not going to attempt to prove that here (though he demonstrates that in the book), but what makes their maturity even more remarkable is that life expectancy for the average Puritans was in the 30s (if I remember correctly). This was a group of young adults with great maturity. So, what makes us immature? Well, I'm going to get there.

My Senior year at Tulane, we had a visiting professor in the French department. Her name is Fatima Mernissi. She is a Muslim professor, author, and activist from Morocco. The class she taught was as much a laboratory for her as an education for us. While she examined our attitudes toward the Muslim harem, we learned about her world. I'll never forget her perspective on the western world. She saw in us an obsession with what she called "Beauty Babies" or something like that. In other words, westerners' ideals of beauty were often dolled up teenage girls. While television stars in Morocco were often middle-aged and carrying some weight, ours were starving and striving to look young.

As I'm approaching middle age myself (in my early 30s), Dr. Mernissi's ideas and those of others I've known and read have begun germinate in my mind. In our culture, grown women make incredibly expensive efforts to look like young girls. We mold our bodies, faces, and minds into the form of immaturity. Wisdom is not highly valued in our culture. Wildness, recklessness, rebellion, and a spirit of adventure... those things are valued. These are not mature qualities. This is not the fruit of wisdom. Wisdom is not valued.

So we have the elevation of children in society and the devaluation of age and experience... the devaluation of parents. We see this in our art. Television shows, movies, music all portray parents as "out of the loop" and out of touch with reality. Of course children are disrepectful when adults are visualized as buffoons. But really, if adult society is trying to imitate childhood, then how should our children view us? If we ourselves don't respect maturity, should our children respect us, the mature?

What is harmless doesn't stay harmless and the superficial bleeds into the substantial. Or maybe the quest for youth was never superficial to begin with. But the results of the growing immaturity of our culture are fast becoming dangerous. Take for example the UN Treaty on the Rights of the Child. As it is written, parental discipline and guidance could be considered violations of the rights of the child. Computer software that blocks objectional material could be considered a violation of the right of the child to free access to information. Or take into consideration the attempts to criminalize disciplinary spanking. Or the attempts by some to treat religious teaching as child abuse (Richard Dawkins, Nicholas Humphrey, etc.). Parental experience, wisdom, care and guidance are treated as contemptible by some in this day.

But what does this have to do with maturity? We all recognize that the western way of life is unhealthy. The goal of many of our adults is to be childlike. The western way is often to live out childhood fantasies with adult freedom and resources. The response of some minds to this phenomenon is to take control of the children away from the parents. If parents abdicate their responsibilities, then those who care will step in... and step on toes if necessary.

So what do we do? I don't know that there is an easy answer to the question, "How do we begin to value maturity and wisdom?" I think that first we have to take a good, hard look at ourselves. In order to value maturity, we first need to know what it looks like. Then we need to decide whether or not we look like it. And if we don't... and if we're in a western culture, we may not... then we need to make the conscious decision to change what we value and to act according to what we've decided is a mature value system.

Not easy, is it? Values and behavior don't just change in a day. Cultural values and behavior may not change for generations. But if we don't start, then who will? And what kind of world will our children face? Our grandchildren?

The Bible says that, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction." In my life, I've been a fool and I've been wise. But the foolishness came from me and the wisdom from God. My prayer is that we become a wise nation once more, as in the days of our founding fathers. In the meantime, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord."

Can We Have Peace in the Midst of a Storm? (Part 3 of 3)

Now we get to the heart of the matter. I didn't go searching for a way to have peace in a storm. I just knew I needed peace and didn't have it. God took the initiative and taught me about peace with a surprising passage.

The story is told in the books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Each recounting of the events contains slightly different details and when the different accounts are combined, a richer picture comes into focus. For this reason, I am presenting you with the combined stories of Matthew 8:23-27, Mark 4:35-41, and Luke 8:22-25:

One day, when evening had come, [Jesus] told [his disciples], "Let's cross over to the other side of the lake." As He got into the boat, His disciples followed Him. So they left the crowd and took Him along since He was in the boat. And the other boats were with Him. And as they were sailing He fell asleep. Suddenly, a violent storm arose and came down on the sea, and the waves were breaking over the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped and [they] were in danger. But He was in the stern, sleeping on the cushion. So the disciples came and woke Him up, saying, "Lord, save us! We're going to die!" "Master! Master! We're going to die!" and "Teacher! Don't you care we're going to die?" But He said to them, "Why are you fearful, you of little faith?" Then He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waves, and said to the sea, "Silence! Be still!" and the wind ceased and there was a great calm. Then He said to them, "Why are you fearful? Do you still have no faith?" And they were terrified and amazed, saying to one another, "Who can this be? He commands even the winds and the waves and they obey Him!"

As they set sail, Jesus fell asleep in the storm, (the pilot's place, no less) and didn't wake up until His disciples came to wake Him. Now, that doesn't really seem so odd, and you might be tempted to gloss over the fact that He was sleeping through the storm, but let's take a good look at it. The Gospels tell us that the waves were breaking over the boat, the boat was being swamped, and they were in danger. Undoubtedly, the boat was being tossed about. I can just picture His body being jerked back and forth with the tossing of the boat. Since the waves were breaking over the boat, anyone who has spent some time on the water will recognize that this means there was spray coming from the waves. The Gospels also say that the boat was being swamped. The original Greek word here means "covered." Most likely, He was getting soaked; soaked and jerked around. Yet He slept. What kind of sleep was this?

For the sake of argument, I'll call this "intentional" sleeping. For this moment, Jesus needed to be unavailable. His body was a human body and got tired in the same way ours does. Surely, He physically needed the rest. But in this instance, His rest served an additional purpose. Isaiah 45:15 tells us, "Yes, You are a God who hides Himself, God of Israel, Savior." And in a sense, this is what Jesus did. But in case you are concerned that God really is sleeping and unaware during your trial, Psalm 121:3-4 assures us that "Your Protector will not slumber. Indeed, the Protector of Israel does not slumber or sleep." That leads us to Point Number 1: If Jesus is in the boat, you have nothing to fear.

But the disciples did fear. These men were used to fishing on this sea, yet they were very afraid. What was scaring them? I think that question is best answered by looking at Jesus' response. "Then He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waves, and said to the sea, 'Silence! Be still!' and the wind ceased and there was a great calm." Jesus' emphasis here is on quiet. In Greek and Hebrew, the word for "wind" is strongly associated with "spirit" or "mind" (they are often the same word). The word for "still" means "to muzzle" and the word for "ceased" means "to grow weary or tired, to cease from violence, or to cease raging." Without being tedious, I'd like to suggest what He might say for each of us today based upon that passage: "then He got up and rebuked the spirits and minds, and said to the voices, "Stop speaking! Be muzzled!" and the minds and spirits grew weary and ceased raging from violence." This possibility leads us to Point Number 2: Since there is no real danger, it's the noise of the storm that is scaring you.

There are three points to this message and I've already shared the first two. The third point is the last ditch effort. If you can't find peace with the realization that 1) there is nothing to fear, and 2) the noise of the storm is what's frightening you, the our Point Number 3 is to do what the disciples did: Cry out to Jesus!

Each of the recorded disciples cried out their own plea and what did He say? He said, "Why are you fearful, you of little faith?" Here He points out that they had no real reason to fear. He could have gone back to sleep, but He didn't. Because He loved them and to demonstrate His power, He honored their pleas. He will also honor ours. James 1:6 says, "But let him ask in faith without doubting. For the doubter is like the surging sea, driven and tossed by the wind."

And isn't that how we are sometimes, "driven and tossed by the wind." But God honors our requests for peace because He loves us. Listen to what God says to us in Jeremiah 29:11, "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope." King David understood God's love for us well and He wrote about it in Psalm 56:8-9, "You Yourself have recorded my wanderings. Put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your records? Then my enemies will retreat on the day when I call. This I know: God is for me." Indeed, God is for His children. And don't limit you enemies to physical human opponents. We have more "enemies" than that.

Let us close with a quick recap. When life is hard and you feel helpless in the midst of a fierce storm, remember these three things: #1 If Jesus is with you, no matter what happens around you, you are safe, #2 you are safe, so don't let the sights and sounds of the storm scare you, and #3 if you cannot conquer your fear, then cry out to Jesus. But there is one disclaimer. This is only true if Jesus is with you, and Jesus is not with you unless you are with Him. But be comforted, because God says in Jeremiah 29:12-13, "You will call to Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart." May you find in Him the peace that passes all understanding and may His joy be in you and your joy be complete.