I decided to start this little blog because of some realizations i had during the midtown service tonight. (For those of you who don't know, midtown is a church in downtown columbia, they meet at night in the state museum.) Dustin, one of the pastor's, told this story about how he was sitting on a plane with his Bible in hand and the man next to him asked him if he based his life on that book. Dustin answered yes, and the man quickly said you must have read it 30 times. Of all the things for someone to say after a question like that. I mean, i struggle just having a quiet time every once in a while much less read the whole Bible. I base my whole belief off this Bible that I've never read all the way through, I haven't even read most of it, or half of it. I started to think about all the things i say i believe, for example, the words i sing in worship songs. Have i ever really thought about the words that i'm singing? the answer is heck no. instead of singing the last few songs of the service i sat and read them, thought about them, and realized something scary: the songs were completely different then what i thought. just these two songs had such crazy depth to them i'd never realized or thought about. I'll never forget when i was at a summer camp, Jeremy Kingsly spoke and went on a tangent about worship. During his tangent he said something I will probably never forget, "if you dont mean the words you're singing in the songs you sing, you are lying to God." I don't think that hit me hard until recently. So now to the point of the blog....and you thought i'd never get to it.
In order for me to understand what I'm singing better, I'm going to take the lyrics from popular worship songs and dive deeper. It may just be a line, or the whole song but yeah we'll just start with that. Maybe this little blog will expand from there, maybe it wont. I'll start with one tonight:
We sang "Mighty to Save" by Hillsong tonight, super popular song with a powerful message. I want to skip over the chorus for now, I'll hit that up another day, and focus on the bridge. The bridge of this song reads:
"Shine your light and
let the whole world see.
Were singing, for the glory
of the risen King, Jesus."
I think this song has been on the set list for at least 2 of the 4 church services i've attended this summer while home, its obviously pretty popular. I sang it all the time, until tonight i decided to read instead of just singing the words i'd memorized. I focused on the line, "Were singing, for the glory, of the risen King Jesus." Is that really why i sing? do i sing to bring glory to God, to praise him? Why do i sing?
I will be honest here, even though i have heard at least 5 different pastors say, worship is not about you. I continue to believe that worship is about the experience i get out of it. this song is saying the exact thing i was afraid of, worship is indeed not about me. It's about the glory of God. I worship to bring him praise, not for the good feeling i get or the emotional high. Not that God doesnt speak to us through worship, but thats not the purpose of worship. The purpose of worship is to glorify God. that's why were singing. period.
for tonight, thats all i got.
