Here I Am To Worship

We've been talking this evening at worship: what worship is, what it means to worship, how we worship.

 

Taken from the Old English 'weorthscipe' meaning worthiness, worship means to acknowledge the worth of. 

 

When we worship God, we are acknowledging who He is and, therefore, are acknowledging His worthiness.

 

But worship isn't something we do for half an hour in church on Sundays.  Or during the week when we listen to a 'worship' CD.  It's not even really about singing.

 

Yes, singing is a large and significant part of worship, but true worship is about living a life which acknowledges God's worthiness in all areas.

 

Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well:

"It's who you are and the way you live that count before God.  Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth.  That's the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship.  God is sheer being itself - Spirit.  Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration."

 

[John 4:24 MSG]

 

 

I love that line - those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship. 

I love it and I am deeply challenged by it.  I'm not sure that I've very comfortable simply and honestly being myself: I'm not sure I feel enough.  Sometimes I like to dress myself up in different layers of disguise.  I'm not even sure I know what it means to be simply and honestly myself.

But I want to start to find out.

I want to say, as Tim Hughes sang, "Here I am to worship."

No pretense, no disguise, no distraction.  Not just here I am for 20 minutes.  But every day, every moment - here I am to worship.


 

 

 

 

Because You're Worth It

I've started reading a really interesting book today called 'The Gifts of Imperfection' by Brene Brown. 

 

As someone who constantly battles with perfectionism, the idea that imperfection could be okay, let alone a gift, is quite a difficult one for me to swallow.  However, the first section that I've been reading has been really interesting.

 

In one of the early chapters, she describes the concept of worthiness - feeling worthy, or good enough, for love and belonging -

 

"The biggest challenge for most of us is believing that we are worthy now, right this minute.  Worthiness doesn't have prerequisites.  So many of us have knowingly created/unknowingly allowed/been handed down a long list of worthiness prerequisites [she continues to list the 'prerequisites we conjure up to become 'worthy' of love and belonging] ... We are worthy of love and belonging now.  Right this minute.  As is."

 

I love how this concept of worthy right now is seen in Jesus and beautifully displayed through His ministry.  Jesus reached out and touched the blind, the 'unclean', the rejected.  He touched the outsiders of society and called them worthy.  And in declaring them worthy, they became worthy.

 

It is the same with us.

 

He reaches out to us and embraces us, no matter where we find ourselves, or what we have done or thought or believed.  And He declares us worthy.  Because of His great love, manifested in His death for us on the cross.

 

"Immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us.  He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ [...] Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah."

 

[Ephesians 2:4, 6 MSG] 

 

We can't earn God's love.  But we don't need to.

 

We are worthy because He says we are.

 

 

 

Everyone Likes A Bargain

When we were growing up, we used to listen to the 'Just William' stories by Richmal Crompton on long car journeys.  One of our favourite family quotes, which is still used today, is one of the characters overhearing another saying, "Wasn't it a bargain?" (with "bargain" being pronounced as a rather bunged-up "bargun").

 

Whenever I am in charity shops, or at jumble sales, I enjoy rifling through clothes and books and crockery etc. and I am always secretly hoping that I will find something valuable which has gone unnoticed and has been given a price which doesn't really reflect its true worth.

 

I am always in search of a "bargun".

 

On a few occasions, I have been in luck. 

 

And when I have struck gold, I haven't minded how much I've paid, because I know it's worth more than the price on the tag.

 

I read this verse this morning and it reminded me of this "bargun hunting":

"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field.  When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field."

 

[Matthew 13:44 NIV]

 

 

To everyone else, this man must have seemed mad.  To sell everything he owned in order to buy this field.  But he was willing to give up everything else to gain this treasure.  He had understood its worth.

 

He had found a bargun.

 

But I know that my reaction to God's Kingdom is so rarely the same as this man.  I am not willing to give up everything in order to gain the treasure.  I don't want to give up my dreams, or ideas, or priorities, or hopes, or opinions, or values, or time, or money.  I want to hold on to them.

 

But in so doing, I cannot 'gain' the treasure: the man in the parable had to sell all that he had in order to buy the field and get to the treasure.  He couldn't have them both.  And so he gave it all up.

 

But to this man, what he gained far surpassed what he lost.

 

Had Richmal Crompton retold the parable, I imagine she might have allowed the man to say of the field and of the treasure, "Wasn't it a bargun?"