October 2012 - Pastor's Reflection

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what worship is for the community of believers here at Mt. Nebo and especially what worship is for me. Worship is defined by Webster’s dictionary as "reverence offered a divine being or supernatural power"; also "an act of expressing such  reverence; a form of religious practice with its creed and ritual; extravagant respect or admiration for or devotion to an object of esteem <worship of the dollar>. Others have tried to define it as “love,” or “intimacy,” or “relationship”. All of these may seem to say something true, but seem to end up leaving out more than they contribute to a complete understanding of what worship really is. Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) once said “Every definition is dangerous.” That may explain why when we try to define worship in simple and specific terms we may end up missing significant aspects of what we actually want to define.

Through the years I’ve have read a number of definitions of “worship” that have caused me to start thinking about worship from a more biblical point of view. Here are a few for you to ponder:

• “Worship is the believer’s response of all that they are – mind, emotions, will, body – to what God is               and says and does. (Warren Wiersbe, Real Worship, p. 26
• Worship is “acknowledging that someone or something else is greater – worth more – and by consequence, to be obeyed, feared, and adored…Worship is the sign that in giving myself completely to someone or something, I want to be mastered by it.” (Harold Best, Music through the Eyes of Faith, pg. 143)
• “Worship of the living and true God is essentially an engagement with him on the terms that he proposes and in the way that he alone makes possible. (David Peterson, Engaging with God, pg. 20)
• True worship is “reverential human acts of submission and homage before the divine Sovereign, in response to his gracious revelation of himself, and in accordance with his will.” (from Dr. Dan Block’s For the Glory of God. course notes) 
• "Worship is the gift of participating by the power of the Spirit in the incarnate Son's communion with the Father." ~ James Torrance 
• WORSHIP is: Our response both personal and corporate to GOD- for who HE is! and for what HE has done!   Expressed in and by the things we say and the way we live. -Louie Giglio, 
• “Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of the conscience by His holiness;the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of the imagination by His beauty;the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose - and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable, and therefore the chief remedy of that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin.” (William Temple, 1881 – 1944)

Let us take time to consider how WE define worship and then let us express that whenever we gather together. Shalom, Rev. Pat