Worship Addict
Disclaimer: Christian worship takes many forms including but not limited to song-singing, tithe, offerings, Bible reading, and honoring the Lord in virtually any way. This blog is focused solely on song-singing worship. You may now return to reading this blog.
Go back with me: you’re at your first-ever Jesus-focused conference/church service/revival night event and the worship
Is
Fire.
Goosebumps are on your arms, your hands are out and proud, you’re crying, you’re not afraid to sing to the top of your lungs, and you don’t even care if you’re singing badly. In that moment it is you and Jesus, and you cannot possibly deny the presence of the Holy Spirit, and anyone who would try to convince you otherwise is a dingus.
I love these moments. I absolutely do. I love that God designed us to have physical reactions to kind of invisible things. The fact that our bodies even get a physical reaction from music, let alone Jesus-praising music, blows my mind. I believe God gets excited when we engage with Him, but there are ways that worshipping Him can be misused, even if unintentional.
The goals of worship should be 1) intimacy with God that inevitably leads to 2) heart transformation. The problem is that oftentimes, we stop at goal #1. We stop at the tearful, goosebumps on the arm, hand-raising good feelings and we go home virtually the same way we left. Maybe worship was so good that you experience a holy high afterward. You’re on top of the world with Jesus, but then fast forward to a week later and your life is the same. And so the cycle is this: you keep going to all the Christian events, chasing the presence of God and taking your hits of worship to get the Jesus high, to feel good, and to absorb this pseudo-satisfaction that you’re a deep Christian because you allow yourself to cry at church. You might have even found that you chase these events while you simultaneously ignore the Holy Spirit’s nudge to spend time with Him in simple devotion.
You use God’s presence without allowing His power to sink deeply into you. Indulging in this cycle gives you a false sense of confidence and complacency in your relationship with God. You settle, you turn into a hypocrite, and yet, you don’t understand why you have an unfulfilled, spiritually empty home.
He’s not in your home because you haven’t actually invited him in.
He’s not in your home because you haven’t actually invited him in. Worship unlocked the door, but transformation allows him inside.
Remember goal #2? The key to heart transformation is that you let God drench you in His love. You allow Him to crawl into those dark, hardened, hidden, uncomfortable, “shameful” places and refine them to match His holy standards. You surrender your racism, your sports idols, your patriotic idols, your glorified shame, your rage, your unforgiveness, and your drama. The good news about this process, the best news, is that God already deeply knows about these parts of you, even if you don’t want to acknowledge them, and He loves you just as much now as He ever will - He just wants you to believe it.
He loves your dirty, racist, idolizing, prideful, angry, hardened, worship-addicted self as if you are spotless and glowing in perfection. He is radical and reckless in His love this way.
So as it goes, conviction is key to utilizing worship in the way God truly intended. It’s key to start living out your life more abundantly. It will usually be intimidating, uncomfortable, and maybe radical at first. But, in your raw vulnerability, He’ll show you how you can enjoy, look forward to even, His holy convictions in their purest form. Imagine enjoying conviction - it’s an amazing thing.
And a beautiful way for this process of true surrender to begin is in the vulnerable, fully utilized arms of well-intended worship.