Can worship be “practiced”?

Following yesterday’s post entitled “Walking out of worship,” IreneQ sent me an email in which she wondered about “practicing” for worship. From her email (with her permission to blog about it, of course)…

First, let me emphatically state for the record that I don’t presume to have any special insights about worship. All I know is what I read in the Bible — and some of that I don’t fully understand — or what I’ve heard people who are smarter than me say about the subject. I do believe that worship is a very personal thing, even when it’s done as a part of a large group of people. In my book, “corporate worship” is simply a collection of individuals meeting one-on-one with God.

But I also believe that such gatherings are to be orderly. We don’t worship a God of chaos; He brought order out of chaos. And if a worship gathering is to be orderly, that seems to imply that some preparation is appropriate and even necessary.

That preparation may involve honing of skills in order to present an acceptable offering to God. Should we bring any less than our best before Him? The first murder in recorded history occurred as an indirect result of Cain’s bringing an unacceptable offering to God.

That preparation may involve planning, or the creation of a framework designed to facilitate worship. God set down very specific instructions for the nation of Israel, and, specifically, the priests to follow when they came before Him. Our worship practices today are different, as each believer is now inhabited by the Holy Spirit, but I daresay most of us are able to make better use of time set aside for worship if there’s a certain structure to that time.

Most importantly, that preparation should involve getting one’s heart, mind and attitude into “worship mode.” Jesus instructed us to leave our offering at the altar and run to make peace with anyone with whom we have a conflict, so that our worship will be acceptable. I interpret that instruction to mean that we’re to get rid of distractions that keep us from focusing on God and His will for us…and it’s difficult to do that on the spur of the moment.

So, what we’re really talking about is not practicing worship but rather preparing for worship. Just as the praise team needs to know how to hit the right notes, so each individual worshipper needs to have an open heart before approaching the Lord. It’s not impossible that both of those things can be accomplished in an instant, but for most of us, most of the time a little preparation goes a long way.

[And, in the end, that preparation should allow us the freedom to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit if He has a different agenda than the worship leader! But, that’s a whole other discussion.]

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