How Do I Worship Every Day of the Week?
Worship is a whole-person response to who God is and what he has done, realized both individually and corporately by his grace and according to his standards.
There is no shortage of disagreement and confusion in the Church concerning worship. When teaching classes[1] connected to the Scriptures, theology, and history of Christian worship, I often begin by asking students, “According to the Scriptures, what is worship?”
The answers vary greatly and mostly focus on reducing worship to feelings or emotions—a few minutes of singing on Sunday or a particular style of Christian music they know and prefer. Unfortunately, confusion around this subject has had a weighty impact on how Christians live their everyday moments with God.
Understanding worship is eternally important not only for the Church collectively but for all people individually. When God graciously revealed himself to the nation of Israel in the Ten Commandments, the first and most foundational commandments all connected to worship. The ethical commands that came late (do not kill, do not steal, etc.) were all rooted in a proper understanding of true worship.
More than a topic reserved for debate among highly credentialed seminary professors, worship connects to the most practical, deepest parts of who we are as humans. Worship is a serious subject because everyone, whether they know it or not, is a worshiper. As theologian Harold Best importantly states:
Nobody does not worship…At this very moment, and for as long as this world endures, everybody inhabiting it is bowing down and serving something or someone—an artifact, a person, an institution, an idea, a spirit, or God through Christ…We are, every one of us, unceasing worshipers and will remain so forever.[2]
The Book of Revelation, at its most basic level a book of worship, ends the biblical canon by describing two groups of people: those who worship the beast and those who worship the Lamb. And the choice made by each group of worshipers has eternal ramifications.
So, what is worship?
Worship Is An All-Encompassing Response to God
If I had to define worship in a wordy sentence, it would be this: Worship is a whole-person response to who God is and what he has done, realized both individually and corporately by his grace and according to his standards.
A holistic study of the Scriptures connected to worship encompasses topics such as praise and adoration (both communal and private), corporate services, prayer, Scripture reading, sacrifice, confession, preaching, music and the arts, intercession, service, and lament.[3]
Worship is a whole-life topic that connects to our attitudes and dispositions as well as our actions in the world.
In one of the seminal, all-encompassing worship texts in the New Testament, the apostle Paul wrote in Romans 12:1, “Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship” (emphasis mine).
Paul had spent 11 chapters unfolding God’s amazing plan of salvation, his rescue plan for fallen humanity. His writing about all that God has done for us crescendos and reaches a climax in Romans 11:33-36 when he says,
Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments and untraceable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? And who has ever given to God, that he should be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.
It is as if, after writing about God’s redemption plan and the total overthrow of the powers of sin and death by the death and resurrection of Jesus, Paul must set down his pen and simply praise God! But then he pivots and says essentially, Christians, considering everything God has done for you, sacrifice yourself; give your redeemed self back to God and be set apart for his service. This is true worship.
So, What Does This Mean for My Life?
What we infer from Paul is that whole-life worship is the Biblical norm for Christians. Those who have been made alive in Christ worship Him; this is the essence of Christian faith and practice.
The gospel includes not only forgiveness but also a whole new life—a transformed life, a thoroughly integrated life where what we believe is lived out in real-time in the most practical ways. It is no accident that Paul says in the verse following Rom. 12:1, “Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed.”
This language, however, is all theoretical and philosophical. What does that really look like to be a whole-person worshiper of the Triune God?
Paul gives us many examples in the next three chapters, specifically Rom. 12:3-15:13, about what a true worshiper looks like (Note: There are many topics Paul addresses. I would recommend you read this passage slowly and make your own list and pray over the list). True worshipers:
- Are humble, not arrogant (12:3)
- Love genuinely (12:9)
- Are hard-working, not lazy (12:11)
- Are generous (12:13)
- Love their enemies (12:17-21)
- Obey the law (13:1-7)
- Cast off works of darkness (13:12)
- Do not cause other Christians to stumble (14:13)
- Build others up and promote peace (14:19)
- Are patient with weak Christians (15:1)
- Love their neighbors (15:2-3)
Sunday Christians live compartmentalized lives, relegating God to small, fenced-in parts of who they are. They are grateful for forgiveness but have little interest in the whole-person worship that the Scriptures call us to live out daily. Monday Christians, ever-mindful of the depths of God’s love, grace, and mercy for them, humbly give themselves moment-by-moment to God as a continual offering of worship.
Be a Monday Christian.
[1] I hold a Doctorate of Worship Studies from The Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies in Jacksonville, FL.
[2] Harold M. Best, Unceasing Worship (Wheaton, Ill: IVP Books, 2003), 17.
[3] For a fuller topics list connected to worship, see Daniel I. Block, For the Glory of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2014), 26.
