Pressing On!

     Have you ever wondered if you were the only one that has trouble understanding something?  For example, when you were in junior high and it just seems obvious to you that everyone else in the class must have already taken this mathematics course because they all understand what is going on just fine.  And yet you are still scratching your head because you just simply haven’t figured the concept out yet.  In time it finally sinks in and you get it.  Not that it means that the mathematics course was wrong or stupid or whatever you called it when you were growing up, it just took you a while to figure it out.  You know, it took time to make sense of it all. 

     Sometimes I feel the same way about the word worship.  Maybe I just haven’t figured it all out yet.  Maybe I never will.  I do pray for understanding to help me to see it for what the Bible has said that it is and nothing more or nothing less.  I am going to list a few things that I know about worship, just to let you know why I understand what I do about worship. 

1.  I do know the word worship is first found in Genesis 22:5 Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey, and I and the lad will go over there; and we will worship and return to you.”

2.  I do know the word worship is translated differently from one version of the Bible to another, such as in Exodus 3:12 the NASB says And He said, “Certainly I will be with you, and this shall be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God at this mountain.” And then the KJV translates the word as serve.

3. I do know the word worship is used in reference to God and to idols.  Psalm 2:11 Worship the LORD with reverence And rejoice with trembling. Then in Daniel 3:5-6 that at the moment you hear the sound of the horn, flute, lyre, trigon, psaltery, bagpipe and all kinds of music, you are to fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king has set up. “But whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be cast into the midst of a furnace of blazing fire.”

4. I do know the word worship is used to mean many different things.  And most of those are things that are not what we would call church gathering events. 

     However, I do believe that worship is what we do when we come together to praise and honor the Lord, God the Father and Christ the Son.  Just as much as I understand that worship may not always be done as a group activity but can simply be me serving in the name of Christ in another capacity.  I also can conclude from study, that worship in not just the singing of hymns, choruses or spiritual songs, that worship is about pleasing the Lord in spirit and in truth as we learn in John chapter 4.

     In the summation of what I am trying to share is perhaps this, Worship is not so much what we do or when we do it, as much as it is what we are and how we express it.  And I believe that as we find in scripture it ought not be about what pleases me. but actually what pleases the Lord.