What’s the Big Picture? When it comes to the essence of worship, David Binion, Pastor and Worship Leader at Covenant Church, Texas, wonders whether our focus is quite right.
Being a part of the community of worshipers at Covenant Church in Carrollton, Texas is a wonderful thing. But as well as spending several years trying to develop a culture of true authentic worship, I have also had the privilege of traveling around the world and experiencing various streams of churches and denominations express their worship. And the more I see, the more I realize how much alike we all are. Whether you're black or white, asian or Australian, if we want to enter God’s presence, we have to come the same way.
David asked in the Psalms, "Who will ascend the hill of The Lord? He who has clean hands and a pure heart." He also wrote that we should; "Come before His presence with singing. Enter His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise." I love the Message translation: “Enter with the password, "Thank you.” (Psalm 100:4) Essentially, He's given us tools and made a way for us to come before Him, but we must have a pure heart if we expect to get close.
But there are challenges that lie ahead of us that threaten to detour us from the path or push us in a direction we really don’t want to go. How many times have we allowed our worship services to become a parade of entertainment? How many times have worship leaders and musicians indulged themselves with a display of how well they can hit the high notes, pull off some impressive arrangement or rolled out a set list that went down a storm with the congregation despite the fact that it had wandered far from focusing on God.
We can end up like a talent show dressed up in religious language. Is that really what we’re here for?
In John 4:23 Jesus said the time is coming when true worshipers would worship the Father in Spirit and Truth. To worship in Spirit means that we get to partner and co–labor with the Holy Spirit. That part is exciting! We love that idea. But to worship in truth? We cannot hide who we are and worship Him in truth. We have to be blatantly honest before Him. We have to be raw. We have to be humble.
Worship has never been about drawing attention to ourselves but giving all of our focus to Him. It's never been about how good we are, but how good He is. And that’s the biggest picture of all.