What is Worship?

What is worship?  This is perhaps the most important question in the history of Christianity.  In many ways worship functions like oxygen for the Christian life.  In that a person's body requires oxygen, when he is deprived of oxygen he dies.  

When oxygen enters the body it moves to the lungs where it functions to nourish the body’s blood.  Oxygen fills a persons blood and moves to the heart where it is pumped throughout the body, so that it can nourish his muscles and organs.  So, with every breath that a person takes, he is allowing life to enter into his body, enabling him to exist.  When a person cannot breath well, or some other complication within the body causes an inadequate supply of oxygen to the blood, the muscles and organs of a person’s body suffer, even the heart.  Eventually, if a person’s muscles and organs continue to be depraved of this nourishing oxygen, they will die, and the person with them.  

Christian worship is as vital to the life of a person and the body of Christ, as oxygen is to the physical body.  If the Body of Christ - or the Church - fail to worship rightly, then its members will become malnourished and eventually die, and the church with them.  Our concern is with the health of the church.  We need to be sure that we are breathing the right air.

You may be asking, "What's the big deal?  I thought that worship was praising God?  What's all of the oxygen talk about?"  Sadly, this is how many Christians approach worship, and sadly, many Christians are not aware of what they lack.  The answer to this question moves beyond the scope of this post.  It requires one to ask a few thoughtful questions such as...What is Christian worship?  Where does worship begin?  To whom is worship directed?  Why do we worship?  Based on the answer to these questions, one might ask:  How are we to worship? And are we worshiping rightly?    

This is an important question to consider.  The beauty of worship has been prostituted for what one of my former professors dubbed, "Grooving on Jesus".  In a world that seems to idolize beauty, the church has a grand canvas and amazing materials to paint the beauty of God and his glorious creation, through the means of worship.