Worship Starts With Seeing

Worship doesn’t start with us, it starts with God.

It’s easy to look at the way we practice worship and think that pretty much defines it. We look around at a worship gathering and see people raising their hands, singing, perhaps moving their bodies a bit, even dancing (!). We copy the actions and away we go: we’re worshiping, right?

Or, if we think of a more liturgical church setting, we see people rising, standing, kneeling, singing, speaking, praying. We copy the actions and away we go: we’re worshiping, right?

Worship leaders also have a tendency to look for outward signs of worship and equate expressiveness with “worshiping well”. If people are raising their hands and singing, worship is “good” right?

Well, maybe. The thing about worship is that although it’s always going to have some physical, outward expression, those expressions are not in and of themselves worship. We can tend to confuse the trappings of worship for its essence.

Worship goes deeper than simply a description of what we are doing. Worship always begins with and ends in God himself. All of the actions of worship that we perform are responses to what God himself has done, they are responses to what we have seen of God. That’s why worship starts with seeing – because it’s always a response to what God has revealed of himself.

If you look at some of the “famous” worshipers in the Bible, they are always responding to something they have seen or experienced of God. David dances wildly before the ark as it comes into Jerusalem, Isaiah confesses his sin after seeing a vision of the Lord, “high and lifted up”, Mary pours an obscenely expensive amount of perfume on Jesus’ feet after her brother Lazarus had been raised from the dead, John the Beloved falls on his face in reverence and holy fear after seeing a vision of Jesus that showed him more than he had seen previously.

If we want to worship as they did, we cannot simply copy their actions, like checking of items on a shopping list: “Okay, dance in my underwear: check. Confess sins: check. Worship extravagantly: check. Fall on face reverently: check.” It’s not enough to simply see what they did and try it out. We have to see what they saw… we need a revelation of the preciousness of the presence of God like David had, we need to see God high and lifted up like Isaiah did, we need to experience the provision of God like Mary did, we need to see Jesus in new ways like John did. Worship always starts with seeing God, with God revealing himself to us.

So how do we do that? We certainly can’t hype our way into it. We can’t try to reverse the equation, thinking that somehow if we can worship “hard enough” that God will give us a glimpse of himself.

Instead we simply must learn to quiet ourselves and know where to look. God doesn’t often show himself with the fury of wind, earthquakes, or fire. Most often God reveals himself quietly, and we’ll have to be paying attention if we’re going to catch it (just ask Elijah). We realize that we cannot force God to show himself, we must simply pray for sight and ask that God show himself.

So be praying, often, daily, with Moses: “Show me your glory.” And be attentive to what God shows you – it may surprise you when God shows himself, how he speaks. It might not be in the context of a worship service or prayer time. It might be in a conversation with a friend or a time of quietness before bed. Be attentive to God’s presence with you always, and you’ll see him more and more.

And then, the next time you find yourself in a time of gathered worship with the Body of Christ, respond to God’s revelation in song, prayer, and posture, in speaking and listening and eating and drinking, in weeping and groaning and laughing and blessing. God’s richest blessings upon us all as we learn to worship in spirit and truth.