Part 1: Only a Big God Can Inspire Big Worship
It’s Sunday.
You wake up and begin the routine that way too often ends in tension and meltdown. You’re going somewhere together this morning, and it involves dressing up, smoothing cowlicks and pony tails on small tornados, and trying to look at least quasi-together as a family. Or maybe you’re retired and the kiddos have kiddos of their own. You wake up to keep a routine that feels familiar and safe, and…well, traditional.
Sunday morning is for worship. It would feel somehow empty if you didn’t go; and yet, if you’re honest, it can feel sort of empty when you do.
The contemporary songwriter Sara Groves puts it this way:
I’ve been feeling kind of restless / I’ve been feeling out of place / I can hear a distant singing, a song that I can’t write / but it echoes in what I’m always trying to say.
Can you hear a distant song? One haunting and beautiful that calls to you through the noise or the rut of routine to something you long to find? You can hear it echo off the bedroom and nursery and corner office and sanctuary walls, but can’t quite lay hold of the source. Like the mythical song of the Siren, it can drive you crazy. Longing and desire can drive you to look in places that God never intended to find peace, rest, and freedom.
What if you actually believed, in practice, that God is the pursuer of friendship with you; that Jesus wasn’t just spouting trite phrases when he said, “come to me all you who are weary, and I will give you rest.” And what if it is the Holy Spirit who gives not just breath, but real honest-to-goodness life? If you knew that you could find what your soul was most thirsty for on a Sunday morning (or whenever your local church gathers), would you come in the same way you do now? Or would it knock you so far off your routine that the next ESPN event (or trophy or vacation or accomplishment) would pale by comparison?
All I’m saying here is that I often see a disconnect between The Story of God, and the stories of seeking God in our own lives. The questions I find myself pondering in the past few years are good ones, and deserve some honest reflection: What kind of God do I actually believe in? Small and emasculated? Capricious? Selfish? One in need of my worship to bolster his self-esteem? And where do I truly find life (and I don’t just mean breath here)? What do I reach for when I’m tired, out-of-sorts, and empty — a Coke? Really?
Coca-Colas’ slogan as early as 1929 was “the pause that refreshes;” so although I use that example flippantly, there is irony in a culture that implies we can find refreshment, relaxation, and renewal by reaching for a ‘moment.’ Even on Sunday morning, the ‘moment’ can become a search for something to help us feel better: the right instrument, the right groove, the right personality in the pulpit, the right-looking family, and dear God, please don’t let that weirdo talk to me again (or, on the flip side, please DO let that state congressman over there become my friend).
Maybe it’s time to look again at the God we believe in, and what we’re doing with Sunday morning. Maybe it’s time to hear again that in worship, we are actually responding to an invitation rather than fulfilling an obligation or keeping a tradition. That distant song we are drawn toward is his song – the ancient, passionate, never-ending heartbeat of a God who has longings too – for real, authentic relationship with us:
The Lord your God is in the midst of you, a Mighty One, a Savior [Who saves]! He will rejoice over you with joy; He will rest [in silent satisfaction] and in His love He will be silent and make no mention [of past sins, or even recall them]; He will exult over you with singing.
Zephaniah 3:17 AMP
This God we worship, whether on Sunday morning or any other time is one who saw that the people he loved just couldn’t be faithful to their promises. But instead of wiping them out, he cut a new covenant with himself to love no matter how we responded. (Genesis 4; Jeremiah 31:31-34; Luke 22:19-20) In ancient times, the strength in a covenant lay in the fact that the two parties making it were willing to die to keep it. In Jesus, the Triune God fulfilled the covenant he had made.
This is a big God, capable of creating worlds with just words. A God with enough heart to love what he created, and enough strength to go after what he lost in the fall. A God passionate enough about keeping promises that he is willing to go to war, and even die to keep them.
We are his pearl of great price. Grabbing hold of that truth alone can change our worship, but there’s more. Be willing to enlarge your view of God, and your worship will follow.
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