This post is actually a paper that I wrote for a chapel make-up. Every semester we're supposed to go to 25 chapels and if we fail to do so we have to listen to them online and write a 700 word essay on all the ones we missed. This is one of them that I think kind of lets you into my life a little bit.
“Worship rises and falls with our concept of God. If you love Him a lot worship flows over and if you love Him a little then you can only fake for so long.”
Horness, the speaker, seems to have a false understanding of worship. Just because a person doesn’t have their eyes closed, hands raised and face turned towards heaven with tears on their cheeks doesn't mean that they aren't worshipping. He brings up this verse.
Isaiah 29:13 “These people worship me with their lips and not their heart.”
This is truth. God can see people’s hearts and know if they are sincere, but humans cannot. We are so wrong to assume people’s attitude towards Christ and their worship to Him. So Horness’s message really should have been about knowing in your heart how you feel about worshipping God. Not looking around and seeing other people’s cold hearts and just going through the motions. Pegging people as insincere and not having any knowledge of where they are really at. If others want to come to church and waste their time being petty and not having any true feelings towards Christ, then we’ve missed the real message. Just by looking at people and saying that they are that way.
Sometimes I have days at church where I don’t feel sincere. I’ve had a rough week and I’m trying to make sense of it and I sing the songs even though that’s not where my hearts at. I think I sing the songs anyways to hopefully remind myself what life is really all about. Sometimes it helps and by the end of the worship time, God and I are back on the same page.
When I was listening to this chapel I had a feeling like maybe I wasn’t a good enough Christian because I don’t always show on the outside what I’m feeling on the inside. But here’s the thing. No Christian is better than the next. We’re all sinners, we’re all saved by grace, and we are all in different places in our relationship with Christ. I don’t care what other people think of me when I’m worshipping. Sometimes my hands are raised and my whole body is praising God, but sometimes I can’t go there and sometimes I’m just feeling it in my heart. Often I can be singing the words, but I’m actually just praying in my head. Either way, I’m worshipping God.
Interesting story about how I grew up. I’m an MK from Mexico and I went to a very conservative privet missionary kid’s school. When we sang praise songs in chapel onces a week, everyone was completely cold. I’m using cold to describe their actions and not their hearts. People would hardly sing out or clap during an upbeat song. One time I had been having a really rough week with my friends, dorm parents, and school. We were singing In Christ Alone and I was just realizing how much I needed Christ to take over and help me with everything and I raised my hands in worship to Him, but then quickly from right behind me a teacher grabbed my shoulder and told me to put my hand down. I’d done something really wrong, because her face looked horrified. I couldn’t figure it out, so after I asked her what my mistake was. She said, “Raising you’re hands during a song is charismatic and very rude to those of us who know you don’t even really understand worshipping in that way. I just didn’t want you to look foolish.”
WHAT! I didn’t even realize until I got into high school and went to a church that had an hour of worship service that everyone seemed to be very involved in. I didn’t realize that the teacher that stopped me was judging where my heart was. She didn’t know what had been going on. I wouldn’t have let her treat me like that if I had known what was actually going on. I think that no matter what no one should ever let someone else tell them whether their worship seems sincere enough or whether or not they know what worship really is.
I didn’t start actually worshipping Christ outwardly until I got to Cornerstone University, because I was embarrassed and still felt foolish for even wanting to close my eyes during a song. When we went to the camp for Terra Firma, I saw that it didn’t matter what other people thought, it only mattered where my heart was with God. That really freed me.
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