Excerpt: When we hear the word "Worship" the first thing that likely comes to mind is a Sunday morning church service. For some, that is raised hands, standing, jumping, and swaying with the music, and saying group amen's after each sermon…

Author: Jeff Hilles

When we hear the word “Worship” the first thing that likely comes to mind is a Sunday morning church service. For some, that is raised hands, standing, jumping, and swaying with the music, and saying group amen’s after each sermon point. For others it is responsive reading, a choir and organ, and what some call the “frozen chosen.” However, a true understanding of worship is much broader than Sunday mornings.

Webster defines the term Worship as a time, “to honor or show reverence for, as a divine being or supernatural power.”

The Bible offers the following verses on the subject of Worship …

Worship from the Old Testament

Psalm 95:6 - Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker!

Isaiah 25:1 - O LORD, you are my God; I will exalt you; I will praise your name, for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure.

Psalm 150:6 - Let everything that has breath praise the LORD! Praise the LORD!

Job 1:20 - Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped.

Worship from the New Testament

John 4:24 - God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

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.

Hebrews 13:15 - Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.

Colossians 3:16 - Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

Worship and Sunday Morning Church

It is interesting reviewing the list of verses above, seeing how few have reference to any form of fellowship gathering, much less Sunday morning church. Only the verse in Colossians suggests a group gathering, without explicitly using the words worship or praise in its context. Yet, again, for many worship seems to imply a group of fellowshipping Christians lifting their voices and / or group prayer and /or being preached at.

Why is that?

Is it because we have lost the art of true worship? Have we forgotten that, from Romans, our bodies are to be “living sacrifices” (even the other six days of the week), “which is [our] spiritual worship?” Or from Hebrews, that we need to “continually offer up sacrifices [of] praise to God” in our daily lives? Or from Psalms and Isaiah, that we need to humble ourselves, “bowing down … letting every breath … praise the LORD” as our true form of worship … not just when others can see us, but alone in our prayer closet as well?