Worship With Your Mind

In Luke 10:27, Jesus said, “…You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind…” As worship leaders, we know that worship is more than songs, that worship is the right response of our whole lives to God’s revelation of Himself. Over the last four weeks, I have spent time exploring what it means to worship God with our hearts, with our souls, with our strength, and today, our minds.

We are easily distracted people. With so much knowledge, information, and entertainment available, we bounce from one thing to the next without any real, or lasting ability to concentrate and give our full attention to one thing. Even while watching television we are scrolling through social media on our phones. If we are to worship God with our minds, perhaps one of the ways we are counter-formed in our worship is by learning to focus our minds and attention on and toward God.

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” - Romans 12:2

One of the critiques I have heard often of sung worship among those from my theological stream is that much corporate worship in the church is overly emotional, repetitive, and shallow. The criticism is that these kinds of songs feel more like love songs to Jesus than declarative statements about the truth of who God is, what He has done, and who He has called us to be. As you look through your master song list, we need to make sure that we are balanced in our songs that primarily help us to think, and songs that primarily help us to emote. The same is true with the way that we communicate, the way that we navigate our liturgy, and current events - are we helping people engage and form their minds through the corporate gathering, or inviting laziness?

I hope and pray as a worship leader there are many things that I do, say, and plan that help to engage the minds of the people I serve. But weekly there are at least two things. First, I think of my lyrics slides as another opportunity to shepherd the people with Scripture and definitions. Second, I include hymns in my set list because they can often include rich truths and ancient language that requires us to use our minds to think while we sing.

We give our time to that which we treasure and value. Or you could say we give our heart, soul, strength, and mind to that which we love most. How are you helping the people you serve to engage in worship with their whole heart, soul, strength, and mind?

Worship With Your Strength

In Luke 10:27, Jesus said, “…You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind…” As worship leaders, we know that worship is more than songs, that worship is the right response of our whole lives to God’s revelation of Himself. Over the next four weeks, I will spend some time exploring what it means to worship God with our hearts, souls, strength, and with our minds.

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

- C.S. Lewis

Life is hard and exhausting. Perhaps this is why we easily set so much of our time and routine on autopilot. The same is true as we gather with the people of God - we know what time to arrive when to sit and stand, when to sing, and when to listen. We can easily go through the motions without having a posture of heart that is open, soft, and responsive to the truths we proclaim as the people of God.

If we are to worship God with our strength, there should be an intensity that we exercise in our response to God that focuses our half-hearted affections. No, our churches don’t need mosh pits for Jesus, but we do need to invite our people to see how their affections have been splintered. In the corporate gathering, we can bless and thank God for being the Giver of every good and perfect gift, while also acknowledging that we are quick to worship created things rather than the Creator (Romans 1:25).

Perhaps one of the ways we need to encourage people to worship God with their strength is to sing loudly. Sing like they believe what they are singing. Sing like they want to believe what they are saying. Sing like they are building up the faith of their brothers and sisters surrounding them in the room - because that is exactly what is happening. We are strengthened, and so is our worship as we gather and respond to the One who is called Almighty.

Worship With Your Soul

In Luke 10:27, Jesus said, “…You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind…” As worship leaders, we know that worship is more than songs, that worship is the right response of our whole lives to God’s revelation of Himself. Over the next four weeks, I will spend some time exploring what it means to worship God with our hearts, souls, strength, and with our minds.

We like to compartmentalize our lives and relationships: this is my work self, and this is my home self. This is my church self, and this is my non-church self. But as embodied souls, our lives, desires, and affections are not so easily separated and split apart. Likewise, there is not a worshiping self and a non-worshiping self. It is all worship. All of life is a response to something or someone.

Sin did not end Adam and Eve’s perfect worship in the garden, nor does it end our worship now, but perverts our worship. Sin sends our worship spinning toward things that are not worthy of our worship. So part of what we are reminding the people of God as we gather is not that worship begins and ends, but worship continues, and our worship must be redirected toward the One who is worthy of our worship, the One who commands our worship, and the One who delights in our worship.

Worshiping God with our souls is worship that involves the whole of our being. All that we are and all that we have. Not just our songs. Not just our minds. Not just our hearts. Not just our time. Not just our talents. Worship that offers our bodies as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1).

I found this video from the Bible Project about ‘The Soul’ very helpful:

Worship With Your Heart

In Luke 10:27, Jesus said, “…You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind…” As worship leaders, we know that worship is more than songs, that worship is the right response of our whole lives to God’s revelation of Himself. Over the next four weeks, I will spend some time exploring what it means to worship God with our hearts, souls, strength, and with our minds.

The heart is the center of our beings. Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks (Luke 6:45). From the heart flow rivers of life (John 7:38). The human heart is desperately wicked, and deceitful (Jeremiah 17:9). But as followers of Christ we have been given new hearts and with it new desires (Ezekiel 36:26).

Rene Descartes’ famously stated, ‘I think, therefore I am.’ But humans are not primarily thinking beings, but beings who feel and desire. As James K.A. Smith said, ‘You are what you love.’ As worship leaders, we have a responsibility to present deep and rich truths in our songs, verbal transitions, and liturgy that inform the minds of our people. But if truth only resides in our minds, without transforming our hearts and affections, we become proud and arrogant (1 Corinthians 8:1).

Living in the shadow of the enlightenment, we must work to help people apply the truth in their minds to their hearts and lives. Depending on your culture or context, seeking to apply and respond at a heart level may easily be confused with shallow emotionalism. But if we understand worship as the right response of our whole lives to God’s revelation of Himself, we will be transformed from the inside out both in our affections, desires, and our response to God. Worship will not just live in our minds as an intellectual ascent to specific truths about God, but will emanate from the center of our beings - the heart.

If we want to lead people in worship that is from the heart, we must be led by the Holy Spirit, as He opens our eyes to behold Christ, and live lives of worshipful response in the gathering and when we are sent out on mission.

I found this video from the Bible Project about ‘The Heart’ very helpful:

Embodied Worship

We know that worship is more than a song. That in fact worship is the offering of our whole lives in response to God. And throughout Scripture, specifically the Psalms we see that worship is expressed through our bodies:

Singing (Psalm 9:11).

Dancing (Psalm 149:3).

Playing Instruments (Psalm 150:4).

Bowing your head in worship (Psalm 95:6).

Clapping your hands (Psalm 47:1).

Shouting (Psalm 66:1).

Being silent (Psalm 62:5).

Raising up your hands (Psalm 134:2).

Maybe these outward expressions of embodied worship do not represent the body of believers you serve, your church background, or your theological bent. But perhaps we who declare worship as more than a song need to acknowledge that the praise of God must be embodied as much as it is sung.

“Let everything that has breath praise the LORD! Praise the LORD!” Psalm 150:6

July 19: Tuesday Refocus

“The intellect makes the prayer, but the feeling makes the cry.” - Martin Luther

Without love, our words are a noisy gong or clanging cymbal (1 Corinthians 13:1). We can possess prophetic powers, understanding of all mysteries and knowledge, have faith to remove mountains, we can give away our every possession, and deliver our bodies to be burned, and all of it is meaningless without love (1 Corinthians 13:2-3).

A prayer without heart is simply a monologue.

Lord may our lives be prayers be filled with truth and love. Attention and affection. Intellect and feeling. Amen and amen.

Amen,

AB 

October 19: Tuesday Refocus

‘Our minds cannot find calm repose until we arrive at the unmerited love of God.’ - John Calvin

“Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Mk 10:17).

Isn’t this the question we all ask?  What must I do?

It almost drips with desperation.  I have kept all of the commandments from my youth (Mark 10:20).  What else is there to do for salvation for the one who possesses the commandments, and great possessions (Mark 10:22)?

What must I do for peace of mind and peace with God?

What must I do?

If I do all of the right things maybe then I can inherit, possess, own eternal life.  But deep down, we all know that we are enemies of God, it is our own doing that put us here, and therefore no amount of our own doing can change our eternal reality.  Rather we are invited, by faith, to rest in the gift of grace (Rom 3:24-26).  We don’t do our way to salvation, we rest in the unmerited love of God:

‘…that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.’ Ephesians 3:17-19

Lord, may we cease our striving, cease our doing, and rest in the work You have done on our behalf.  It is full, finished, and complete.  Forgive my heart which would like to add to that work, to take hold and possess that work as if I have done anything to merit it.  Allow me to arrive at your unmerited love, oh God.  Amen.

Resting,

AB

May 28: Tuesday Refocus

‘Let the high praises of God be in their throats and two-edged swords in their hands…’ Ps 149:6

Worship prepares us for battle.  Not a physical battle – against flesh and blood – but a battle against rulers, authorities, cosmic powers, and spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Eph 6:12). 

This is a battle already won: ‘He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in Him.’ Col 2:15

Although final victory is already secured in Christ, we battle to strengthen our brothers, we battle against the accuser of our souls, we battle to keep our eyes fixed on the Author and Finisher of our faith (Lk 22:32, Rev 12:10, Heb 12:2).

We are strengthened for this battle in our inner being by the power of His Spirit, according to the riches of His glory (Eph 3:16).  And into this battle we cling to the sword of the Spirit – the Word of God (Eph 6:17), living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Heb 4:12).

With sword in hand, we sing: ‘Worthy are You to take the scroll and to open its seals, for You were slain, and by Your blood You ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation (Rev 5:9).’  

Jesus, You are our conquering King, hallelujah!The victory is Yours – and because our lives are hidden in You – the victory is ours as well.Forgive us for not worshiping You as Victor. Forgive us for charging into battle with opinions rather than the Sword of the Spirit. Let Your praise fill our throats, and Your truth fill our hands. Amen.

Hallelujah,

AB