The story of 'Living Room' an emerging Melbourne church & other Miscellaneous rants
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greetings from Fes - Morrocco. Sorry for the lack of blogging of late - before I left Australia we had server problems so I couldnt say goodbye.
Before I give you an update on our trip here is a post that I wrote back in Melbourne before I left........
Does a sense of power impact our ability to truly worship God?
I had a great conversation with some of the Forge guys today. Among the many topics covered was that of worship. Mark observed that whether we use Alt worship, contemporary worship or traditional worship that we seem to have lost some of the focus upon God in our worship.
The sense that I get when I read Scripture is that true worship is when the worshipper realises just how powerful, worthy, huge and amazing God is (none of those words even begin to describe God I know) and they react by completely humbling themselves – even to the point lying prostate before God to symbolise their unworthiness in comparison. Its about complete respect, adoration and dedication to God.
Yet so often we make worship about us. We create a space that suits us. We complain when the band is off, the worship leader chooses the same song as last week or when we’re not stimulated enough to feel Gods presence.
One of the theories that I wondered out loud about today was that in the West many of us feel (or are) so powerful. I won’t speak for everyone, but when I look at my life I’m not really left wanting for much. Whilst by Australian standards I’m by no means wealthy I’m able to rent a nice house, there is always food on our table, I have the ability to travel, I am free to work part time while I study and generally if I want or need something I can usually make it happen. Life does get stressful at times and sometimes it feels a little ‘out of control’ but I generally feel pretty satisfied with life.
Does our satisfaction, self importance, comfortableness and sense of power sometimes get in the way of being able to truly worship God?
Glad to have you back, mate. We were all missing your voice.
Posted by: switch at August 27, 2003 12:59 AMYes, great to see that you are back amoung us. Hope you have a great trip.
Posted by: Mike Utech at August 27, 2003 02:48 AMmaybe the impediment is our capitulation with the pressure to see ourselves as important because we consume, and to expect the market to serve us by developing efficient ways to serve us.
in that case, power wouldn't be the thing in the way, it would be the abdication of power.
I think that a lot of the time we are trying to make ourselves feel important - so many 'worship' songs are about who we are, what we're doing or what we're going to do. That's not worshipping God.
I think sometimes we also get attached to a particular song or style of worhip because we associate it with an experience we've had in the past, and are really worshipping the memory of that experience.