Time for Worship

I love to worship God.  Sunday morning is honestly one of the high points in my week.  For me it’s not about going through the motions of religion.  And even though I’m the worship pastor, my joy in worship takes me so much beyond the fact that planning worship is my job.  Psalm 122 says “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let’s go to the house of the Lord’”.  I am that person.  I am glad.   This is the presence of God we are talking about.  We are destined to worship Him in eternity.  Yet Church time often becomes an optional item on an already packed list of leisure activities.

“The average person is awake 112 hours a week (assuming he or she sleeps eight hours a night).  If a person goes to a weekend worship gathering that lasts two hours, then 98.2 percent of their week is not in a weekend worship gathering.  To most people, “church” involves only 1.8 percent of their time.  The rest is supposedly not “church.”  This is pretty crazy because in reality you and I and other Christians are the church 100 percent of the time”  (Dan Kimball in Emerging Worship).

It’s funny then that time always seems to be an issue when it comes to church.  At Cornerstone, give or take, our Sunday morning worship time lasts one hour.  When you look at the hours, it’s a pretty small investment.  But it’s also a pretty large misunderstanding of what the church is.  One hour on Sunday is not Church.   Church is not the building.  Church is not the one hour program.

Church is you and me.  As followers of Christ, once we make a commitment to follow Him, we become the body of Christ.  We are the church.  Every day of the week we wake up in the morning and by the power of the Holy Spirit the first breath we breathe is church.  Christ followers live a life of a worshiper with all aspects of prayer, devotion, commitment and the study of God’s word.  This is our daily joy to live.

When we arrive on Sunday morning, in essence, we are continuing to explore what we have been doing all week.  That means we need to be reading our Bible, preparing our hearts in prayer, working to give, and serving others.  The only way Sunday morning has any corporate meaning is because worshippers are gathered.  Notice the language here.  You don’t come on Sunday to worship.  You already come on Sunday morning as a worshiper.  If we don’t come as a worshipers, then maybe we need to do a little more soul searching.

What God want is for us to be glad; to delight in His presence at every opportunity.  Coming to worship should never be an obligation or a chore.  Neither should other things in this world become more delightful in our eyes so that at the earliest opportunity we opt out of being in God’s presence.  A song written by Chris Tomlin says in the chorus that you and I were made to worship.  Worship is often a word we associate with singing, or with prayer.  It is a much bigger word than that.  Worship is about God in His mercy reaching out to us in relationship, and about us responding in love, adoration, and obedience.  Could life really be any better than joining with other followers of Christ in worship?

Pastor Lorn Gieck

You and I were made to worship
You and I are called to love
You and I are forgiven and free
You and I embrace surrender
You and I choose to believe
You and I will see who we were meant to be

Made to Worship by Chris Tomlin