All too often church-going is a routine, once-a-week or once-a-month or even once-a-year, that is tended to only by necessity. When at church, worship is usually only thought of as singing with the other congregants and nothing more. The time of singing may even be called ‘praise and worship’. But the word worship seems as though it should involve more than just singing. Worship is the most significant act a person can partake in because it is spiritual, meaningful, self-revealing, and necessary.
In order to begin examining worship, one must first define it. It is within these parameters that an understanding can be formed, and from that understanding an opinion can be made. Webster Dictionary defines worship as “n. religious reverence and homage; act or ceremony of showing reverence; adoration.” It is obvious from this definition that worship is a deeply religious concept. With this assertion, it is appropriate to seek the definition as stated in the concordance of a Bible. The New Living Translation (NLT) dictionary/concordance defines worship as “the appropriate response to God’s self-revelation”. Both agree that worship is an act, and as an act it cannot be passive. However, Webster’s definition encompasses a broad range and not all of it refers to a necessarily spiritual or religious view. The NLT definition says worship is completely spiritual and a rather simple concept.
Perhaps to decide whether worship is spiritual, it would be helpful to have a concrete base of what ‘spiritual’ is in order to build off of it. Generally speaking, anything spiritual concerns the spirit, which is what makes each person unique. If worship is spiritual, then, it concerns the very core of a person. Because adoration is involved in worship, it logically follows that a person would only worship what has deep meaning for them personally. This could be either religious or something more material, such as an idol or a hero, which have their own categories of worship (idol-worship and hero-worship). Because the spirit is the core of a person, and because people only adore what they feel something for deeply, it follows that worship is spiritual. It can even be said that worship without spirit, such as singing songs out of routine, is not worship at all because it no longer involves the core of that particular person.
If a person ‘worships’ without their spirit involved, then that worship loses all meaning. Worship cannot be worship if it is not meaningful because if it is not meaningful it cannot be spiritual. When something is meaningful on a spiritual level, a feeling is associated with it. This feeling is a stirring of something deep within a person, an awakening for most, which brings with it clarity and a desire for that moment to never end. It is similar to having an epiphany, but on a more spiritual level than a cognitive one. On the cognitive level, everything is about learning and logic, while on the spiritual level there are more emotions and perceptions involved with the experience. Worship in itself brings on this spiritual state, this meaningful moment, and when in this state a person can learn a lot about himself or herself and his or her object of worship.
Worship is self-revealing not only because a person is deeply spiritually self-aware during it, but also because what a person worships can tell a lot about a person. Since worship is so intertwined with the core of a person, what a person worships is also an integral part of that person’s spirit. This is where the danger and the beauty of worship can be seen. People can devote themselves to a drug or a cause or a belief or God to the point of worship. Once a person gets to the point of worship they share who and what they are with something outside of themselves. Although the two do not become one, the spirit and the outside force, they do mix and mingle and learn. When worshiping God, a deep peace can settle on the worshiper and they can hear or feel God’s plan for them. When worshiping something inanimate, a person could only mix their spirit with their perceptions of that object because that object is not alive and so cannot provide its own insights to the worship.
If an inanimate object provides no real insight into worship, the question arises as to why a person would worship something without life. The answer comes from the innate need to worship. People have this feeling of longing and searching that is deep within them, coming from their spirit, which cannot be satisfied until the person can worship something and the spirit can mingle with something apart from itself. At this point, it can be said that because an inanimate object does not itself contribute in worship an inanimate object will not fully satisfy this longing of the spirit. For a time, worshiping something material can occupy a person’s core. But without new perspectives on an idol or a hero, that worship becomes stale. God offers Himself in worship, feeding the act and, in turn, feeding the worshiper. The only truly spirit-satisfying worship comes from God, who is alive and is love itself.
Worship is more than singing songs or bowing down. It is an intimate feeling and need within each person, coming from the soul. It shows what is most important to a person, and is similar to a marriage in the sense that a marriage between a person and something lifeless will soon grow stale, whereas marriage between a person and love itself will never go stale on the part of love. Without worship, a person will continue living, but they will not be tied to anything, and nothing will be constant or meaningful to them.
