True Worship

Yesterday, I sat in church for the first time.

Not really.

But if a worship service is truly about worshipping God, then it might have been a time of only few for me.

Over the past forty + years, somewhere along this Christian walk, I have made my experience of church about me. My lens of worship has often been self-focused—where I search and seek for the a-ha or the conviction or the answers to my own life circumstances. Instead of worshipping God alone, I end up worshipping the possibility that God might show up for me.
Not that He won’t or that reflection is wrong, but what I have discovered is that I lean heavily on my side of this “personal relationship”.

Of course, the fact that the details of my life are known to the God of the Universe affirms a certain beauty of Faith, but my worship time appears to be an individualist pursuit. Culture for the win.

Isn’t true worship a selfless adoration of God alone?

Do I ever worship without the thoughts of unanswered prayers in my mind? Without an emotional response wrapped up in my own lens of what God does for me?

The thinking trips me up. I start to measure a good church experience according to how much I hash out in my brain, when I suspect the value of worship lies in the prostrations of my heart. Only for God. Not because of what He does for me or has the power to do, just because He is God. And worshipping Him is my greatest purpose.

I sat in church yesterday, and I tried focusing on God, finally. To truly be present for Another is a tough heart-conditioning in this culture of the individual. There is an unraveling and rewiring that must happen. I think I have only gotten one tangle out. But I am thankful for the chance, each day, to keep working out of myself, instead of constantly focusing on the thinking inside my head.