I'm reading an excellent book by Bob Sorge called Exploring Worship. It has been over 30 years since the first time I voluntarily stood up in church and sang for God (I was about 10 years old and my cousin and I sang "I'll Fly Away") and I feel like I am just now beginning to get a glimpse of what praise and worship are designed to be.
Praise means, among other definitions, "to extol in words or in song; to magnify; to glorify." We can either praise God directly (like we do in the worship service) or indirectly, by praising Him to others. It starts with our minds set on God, who He is and what He has done, but it's not praise until it's put into action or given a voice. I grew up hearing people talk about how you can praise God in your own way and now I am learning that God Himself tells us in His word how He wants to be praised. Did you know that raising your hands in praise isn't just a personal preference? I sure didn't. God tells us in the Bible to raise our hands, just the way He tells us to sing to Him.
I'm probably not alone in thinking this, but I used to think that all praise was supposed to come out of a spontaneous wave of emotion, what some might call feeling the Spirit move. Now I'm learning that we are called to praise even when (and especially when) we don't feel like it. That's considered a sacrifice of praise. It costs something. It's easy to praise God and raise your hands in the middle of an emotional and Spirit-filled service. It's harder to do that when you're worried about how you're going to pay your bills this month. When I think about consciously raising my hands when I'm singing on the Praise Team, I admit to sometimes wondering if I'm being fake. But I have to ask myself whose purpose would it serve best for me to refrain from offering sacrificial (i.e., even when you don't feel like it) praise? The enemy, of course. So I raise my hands in honor of all God is and all He's done and all He's yet to do. If I'm raising my hands in praise even though I'm not necessarily overcome with emotion, there's still nothing fake about it. I don't know that any of us are qualified to judge each other's level of spirituality or worship anyway. That's for God to do. And it's easy to confine yourself to spontaneous worship, when the music and atmosphere are just right and you get those God-bumps up and down your spine. Bob Sorge talks about how some people are like lazy dogs - they sit in the worship service and wait for someone to come along and scratch their worship spot so they will start praising and worshipping spontaneously. Now, I don't personally know anyone like that but I'm sure they exist. I think a little discipline and self-control might be useful in this instance. Can you imagine what would happen in LifeSong Church if one morning every single person in the worship service stood up (another form of praise) and raised their hands in praise during the worship music? I think the roof might just fly off the building!
Along the lines of praising intentionally even if you don't feel like it, we still have to be honest about the condition of our hearts. It's hard to offer true praise when you've got something you need to confess to the Father and repent from. Larry tells the Praise Team and Band that we have to stay "close and clean," meaning stay close to God and keep our hearts clean. How can you offer yourself fully to God in praise when you're trying to hide something from Him? You can't. And how much easier it is to praise God when you are reminded of just how much He has forgiven you!
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