Worship. I don’t know when it happened, I don’t know when it started but somehow my life has been transformed by worship. What I have learned from behind the drums at my church has changed my life.
I struggled a little at first to find my place in the worship team. The worship team has been profoundly gracious to me in allowing me to voice my opinions and I am very grateful to them for allowing me the space to learn and grow and mess up at times. (Please note there will always be volume issues, tempo issues, and three-quarter time, but please be patient, God isn’t through with me yet.)
The most important thing I have learned about worship from behind the drum set is this: It’s not about me. Worship is about the Lord of all creation. It’s not about me or trying to draw attention to myself or how loud I can play or how fast or slow we play a song, but how I can give more, how I can become less, and how I can let God become more.
When I allow the Spirit to work through me, I use the gift He has given me to bring Him glory. I can therefore take no credit for what He does through me. I become an instrument of His will. This mindset or paradigm changed how I worship.
I would like to suggest to anyone seeking a deeper more meaningful worship experience to try this as well. It starts by seeking His presence. What I do is leave any wants or worries, anything stressful or bothersome at the door. I walk into church with the single focused desire to please God with my Worship.
I focus my thoughts on loving the Lord, singing or praising Him to give God my full attention. My desire then becomes to love Him more, to want more of Him, more of His presence, more of Him in my life. As a consequence of this I do receive, I do get blessed; however it’s not my intention or my goal to achieve.
There are times when I worship and I don’t “feel” it. How I “feel” does not change the desire I have to worship, because I am not seeking anything for me. There is never any expectation of what the outcome is or should be, because the desire of my heart is just to spend time praising God, and as a result there is never any disappointment.
I am almost always overwhelmed by how big God gets during this time. My worship then becomes more of a communication with Him.
When I turn my attention to Him and seek His face, and worship with the purpose of showing Him love, my experience with God is much deeper. I believe that we should look outside of the corporate worship experience for a deeper relationship with Him. When we rely on the worship team or the message to move us, I can pretty much guess that eventually disappointments will come: The worship songs were too loud, or too long, or too short; the message was about a subject I cannot relate to, etc.
When we focus on seeking God, His presence only there is no expectation. It no longer matters if I don’t know the words to the song, I can close my eyes and sing a new song, because it’s not about me…or fitting in, it’s just about pleasing God. After a while if we take this further, everything we do becomes worship, how we work, how we walk, how we breathe….if your focused on pleasing God, it all becomes worship.
I’m still working on that though, I get easily distracted…but again, God’s not through with me yet. True worship is not confined to singing in church or open praise (although these things are both good and we are told to do them in the Bible), but it is the heartfelt acknowledgment of God and all His power and glory in the things we do.
To truly worship God, we must know Him and not be ignorant of His good and glorious nature (Acts 17:23). In a nutshell, worship is to glorify and exalt God; to show our loyalty and admiration to our Heavenly Father.
“Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name. And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased” (Hebrews 13:15-16 NIV).