Season: 9 Episode: 134
Listen to episode 134 in Spanish:
Summary:
Meology isn’t only found in preaching, teaching, and Bible study. It’s in worship songs too. But how do we spot it? Does it matter what the words of a worship song are as long as we know what we mean when we sing? Shanda talks about what worship is and why meology in worship does not bring glory to God.
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Hey guys! Welcome back to another episode of Her Faith Inspires podcast where we take cultural issues and align them to biblical truth. This is my first solo episode in a couple of months and I am excited to tackle some of the requested episode topics you have contacted me about and today is a listener requested episode.
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We are talking about worship.
Now, I did do an episode on worship in regard to music and a worship service over a year ago, but I want to get into the theology of worship today and how to spot meology in worship because I understand this well. I have had my own battle with worship and meology and can say a lot about this.
Some of the things we’re going to discuss today is:
- What is worship?
- What’s the point of worship?
- What does worship look like?
What is worship?
The definition from the Oxford dictionary is a feeling or expression of adoration for a deity. The description from the Bible is Romans 12:1, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” So, what does that mean and how do we do it, right?
First, understand that the word therefore in verse 12 means you are building on or extending on all of what Paul said in chapters 1-11. Therefore is a transition word. Paul just finished going through no one is good but God, what I do I hate, what I want to do I don’t, and all that Jesus has done by fulfilling the law. Now he says, therefore.
Paul starts with a Christians worship toward God.
Before we can do anything for God, He must be the God of our lives. The first thing one does when he accepts Jesus as Lord is he worships Him. I think so many people think worship is singing a song, or lifting our hands. Why do I think that? Because I used to think that. And that means I don’t truly understand what worship is.
Paul makes clear that we are to present our bodies as a living sacrifice. I did an episode on the body a few months ago, and this verse reiterates the fact that the body is important. How do we present our bodies as a living sacrifice?
We are a living sacrifice to God by not being conformed to this world which is what Romans 12:2 tells us. To love the world is to offer our bodies as a sacrifice to the services of the world. 1 John 2:15-16 says, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. wIf anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—xthe desires of the flesh and ythe desires of the eyes and pride of life3—is not from the Father but is from the world.”
Got Questions tells us the motivation to worship is because of God’s mercies.
We know who He is and what He has done for us. The knowledge of this causes us to worship God.
To present our bodies means we offer ourselves to God by how we live and our obedience to HIm. This means we live for God no matter what the world offers. The human soul was created to worship something. We will present our bodies as a sacrifice to whatever we worship as God even if we do not call it by that name. Solomon said that God put eternity in man’s heart. Everyone knows God exists by what He has made. If we do not worship God for who He is, we will worship something else. The false assumption is we think if we are not singing praises to or lifting our hands in worship to something else, and we worship God in a church service, we have no other gods but Him because we have completed the motions of worship. But again, that is a false understanding of true worship.
So, true worship has nothing to do with music. Got Questions says it best: music is not the origin or worship but the expression of it. So what are the expressions of worship?
Here is a short but no exhaustive list:
Singing
Shouts of praise
Crying – emotions
Lifting our hands
Music
Dance
Serving
True worship exalts God and brings no adoration or glorification to the self.
What’s the point of worship?
Sometimes we call our church gatherings worship services and during the music and song portion of the service we call it worship. But that also leads others to believe that worship is only designated for a specific time, in a specific location with songs and music. That’s not true at all. Am I saying we should call the worship service something different? I’m not saying we should but maybe it needs to be evaluated? I don’t know.
The point of worship is because God is worthy of our praise. God is to be worshiped. Everything in creation declares the praises of God. It all points to Him. But we are created in His image so we are the ones who should be praising God. As I said before, Solomon said God put eternity in man’s heart. That means man will worship something. The point of our praise is to project our worship to the eternal God.
How do we do that?
Paul said in Romans 12:2 that we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. The only way to worship God is to know God. God wants us to know Him. We do not worship God with our emotions but with our minds. I wrote this post on social media a few weeks ago, but God never said to feel Him but to know Him. If we are to know God, that means the mind has to be involved. The purpose of worship is God and only God.
I remember growing up in church and if the worship service (the music part of the service) made someone cry or “get touched” people would say, ‘Oh, you got blessed.” But is that the purpose of worship? To walk away with an emotional experience? No. It’s not.
I would think a good worship service ended with me crying, shouting and getting goose bumps because a song would get us all riled up.
But is that the purpose of worship? No.
Worship can be quiet. It can be sitting in the aw and wonder of who God is with absolutely no words and no music.
Now, am I saying that you should’t listen to music and sing? No. Please understand me here. Sometimes the words in the song helps express what my heart wants to say but can’t find the words for. That’s good. But the purpose is to honor, exalt and glorify God. Based on what worship is, anyone can lead worship and anyone can worship. In fact, we must all worship.
Now, if you ask me to lead in music or song, I will tell you that’s not the talent the Lord has blessed me with.
I remember when I read Ecc 5:1 and it checked me.
Solomon said, “Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong.” This is a warning for how we are to approach God in worship. We need to approach Him in reverence. Not to be heard, but to hear from Him.
And that brings me to the point I really wanted to hone in on in this episode and that is how we really see meology in worship. So before I get into what worship looks like, which I think if you tie points 1 and 2 together we find out what worship looks like – obedience and offering our lives to God as a living sacrifice. Which, by the way, sacrifice denotes a giving up of something. That means I give up my own desires and my own ways to go God’s way.
But what does meology in worship look like?
A few weeks ago, I was listening to some “worship” songs – and remember, we said singing and music are expressions of worship, not that they are necessarily worship – and let me just give you a few tips on how to know whether or not a song is truly pointing to God’s excellence, holiness, goodness, righteousness and projects our worship to Him or if the song points to our needs, wants, desires, problems, etc.
And look, some of you might love the songs I’m going to use as examples, but all I’m saying is to think about whether or not they should be called worship songs. Evaluate who and what is being highlighted as you listen and sing. I am not telling you you can’t like the song. I’m sitting to think about it and put it into the correct category.
So first song:
I’ll Raise a Hallelujah – by Bethel (beware already) –
I raise a hallelujah x 4 – in the presence of my enemies
louder than the unbelief
my weapon is a melody
Heaven comes to fight for me
I’m gonna sing, in the middle of the storm
Louder and louder, you’re gonna hear my praises roar
Up from the ashes, hope will arise
Death is defeated, the King is alive!
I raise a hallelujah x 4 with everything inside of me
I will watch the darkness flee
in the middle of the mystery
fear you lost your hold on me!
I’m gonna sing, in the middle of the storm
Louder and louder, you’re gonna hear my praises roar
Up from the ashes, hope will arise
Death is defeated, the King is alive!
Sing a little louder (Sing a little louder) x 3
Let’s sing a little louder (Let’s sing a little louder)
Sing a little louder (In the presence of my enemies)
(Louder than the unbelief)
(My weapon is a melody)
(Heaven comes to fight for me)
(In the presence of my enemies)
(Louder than the unbelief)
(My weapon is a melody)
(Heaven comes to fight for me)
Sing a little louder!!
I’m gonna sing, in the middle of the storm
Louder and louder, you’re gonna hear my praises roar
Up from the ashes, hope will arise
Death is defeated, the King is alive!
Oh, I’m gonna sing, in the middle of the storm
Louder and louder, you’re gonna hear my praises roar
Up from the ashes, hope will arise
Death is defeated, the King is alive!
I raise a hallelujah x 4
Just begin to raise your own hallelujah
I can’t do it for you
There’s a song written on your heart only you can sing
And when you sing enemies flee
When you sing prison walls come falling down
When you sing Heaven invades the earth
So just begin to lift up your hallelujah
Raise it like a banner, like a flag
Raise it in the middle of the storm
Let it rise, let it rise
Like a symphony to the King
Everything to You, Jesus
We raise it all
Sing a little louder!!
Raise a hallelujah x 4 (In the presence of my enemies)
(Louder than the unbelief)
(My weapon is a melody)
(Heaven comes to fight for me)
Now, one way to find the theme in a song is to find the repeated word.
In this case it’s “I”. So the theme is what I am doing and that is I am raising a hallelujah. Hallelujah means praise the Lord or God be praised, and I would love it if this was explained in the song, but it’s not. It’s assumed and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but what I don’t like is what is said by the leader (read what the leader says in both paragraphs).
What I don’t like is that this shows you have your own hallelujah. It means you have your own hallelujah only you know and it means what you want it to mean. Jesus is not in the lyrics but king is so we know he’s referring to Jesus. Maybe if the meaning of hallelujah was explained a little better this would jive more with me.
Again, I don’t want to be too critical here, but this is why I feel like emotionalism can creep into the song because we think it depends on how loud we sing that defines worship. Again, that’s a meology mindset and it creeps in.
The other example I have is You Say by Lauren Daigle. Here are the lyrics:
I keep fighting voices in my mind that say I’m not enough
Every single lie that tells me I will never measure up
Am I more than just the sum of every high and every low?
Remind me once again just who I am because I need to know
Ooh oh
You say I am loved when I can’t feel a thing
You say I am strong when I think I am weak
And You say I am held when I am falling short
When I don’t belong, oh You say I am Yours
And I believe, (I) oh I believe (I)
What You say of me (I)
I believe
Again, the repeated word is “I” and the repeated phrase is “You say I am …”
The focus here is again on the self. This is not a worship song. I’m also not saying there’s no truth in it. What the Lord says about you is different than what the enemy or the world says. I get it. But don’t call this a worship song because it isn’t.
On the other hand, we can look to the Psalms for our example of both how to pray and how to worship in an expression of song or poetry and David wrote many of the Psalms. In them, he both asked for God’s help and He glorified God, so it is possible to do both in song. The question is, what are we calling worship and what does it look like?
Again, it really isn’t at all limited to music and it’s not defined by it.
It is by offering our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. If that means we offer a sacrifice of praise, we do that. If we offer a sacrifice of service, we do that. And if we offer the sacrifice of living for God instead of the world which we should do, we do that.
Here are a few examples of David’s cries to God in Psalms and how they mix a need for God and the exhalation of God:
Psalm 23: The Lord is My Shepherd. I will not be in need. He makes me life down in green pastures; He leads me beside still waters; God restores my soul; he guides me in the paths of righteousness for the sake of His name. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.
Ok, you get it. There is a parallel here. Every time David mentions the pronoun He for God, he mentions the pronoun me. He is expressing who God is and how God intervenes in His life.
Psalm 81:1-5
Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth You who have displayed your splendor avow the heavens! From the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have established strength because of your enemies, to do away with the enemy of the revengeful. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you think of him.
God is the object of David’s worship in this Psalm and it is evident that he is projecting praise onto God, not onto self. And David was a king. He had servants, people bowed down to him. He was clothed with royalty. Yet, he understood what it was to call on God and esteem Him higher than himself.
That is hard to do in our culture because although we are not royalty, we are rich.
We are used to having our needs met and our voices heard. But how often do we think about the songs we sing and the theme of each one of them? Are we quick to call every song a worship song and are we ensuring that our words of praise and adoration are projected toward God in what we call a worship service?
If not, we may not even realize that we are nurturing meology in worship when we seek to sing songs that highlight our own needs, troubles and desires.
Close
For every idle word we will give account and I believe that means EVERY idle word. Idle words are not necessary referring to evil words but to empty words or words without substance. I often think about this when I worship or praise God and do it with words. Do I mean what I say about Him or am I paying lip service to God to try and appease Him? He knows.
Isaiah said this in 29:13, “These people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.” What we say means nothing if we do not act on it. It’s equivalent to doing what the word says and not just hearing only – lip service is the brother to hearing and not doing because lip service is speaking and not acting on it.
That’s why true worship comes down to presenting ourselves as a living sacrifice – holy, and acceptable to God.
So moving forward, I want to be more aware of what promotes meology in worship. No man is worthy of praise and worship and to be honest, I don’t think the human nature can handle it. Why? We weren’t created to be worshiped. It warps people. Look at Hollywood for real life examples of this. Worship belongs to God. We must remember to fear Him because He is holy and offer to Him our bodies, not just our words.
I hope that encourages you and helps you be more aware of meology in worship, I have a lot of other episodes coming out that are listener requested episodes, so if you have one you’d like me to tackle, send it my way. My email is hello@shandafulbright.com and I’l catch you on the next one.
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