Why Worship?

In my last post I talked about how God changed my attitude about worship music.  The change is like night and day.  I play in the worship band at church, and honestly I don’t like the weeks when I get a break from playing.  I’d much rather be playing in the band then in the congregation.  My instrument is just another outlet through which I can worship God, and it is an incredible experience to me.  So why do I think worship is so important?  Why do I believe God changed my heart in this matter?  I think worshiping God is the key to unlocking some of the things He has for us.  One of these things is His joy.

Have you ever seen someone that is worshiping God and in His presence and angry at the same time?  Neither have I.  Even if you go into worship angry, once you get in God’s presence it goes away.  Psalm 16:11 says, “You will make known to me the path of life;  In Your presence is fullness of joy;  In Your right hand there are pleasures forever.”  In God’s presence is the fullness of joy.  There are a lot of things that can bring you some joy, but there is only one place that you can get the fullness of joy.  I have had plenty of days where nothing seemed to be going my way.  Instead of dwelling on it, I would put on some worship music and it would change my attitude.  My situation didn’t change, but how I felt about it did.  It would change because as I began to worship, God would fill me with His joy.

One of those days was when I found out I was losing my job at Trinity.  I had lots of options of what to do, but instead I chose to worship God in spite of finding out the news on a Friday afternoon after a long week.  It wasn’t really the first thing I thought of to do as I got in the car, but I chose to push back all those desires and worship.  God gave me joy about my situation.  At the time I didn’t really know why, but now looking back here are some of the things that have happened since I lost my job at Trinity:

1.  I was able to go to Israel for a week.  Something I would not have been able to do if I was still full time at Trinity.
2.  I was able to go to Chicago for an interview with Owl City.  Adam Young is a pretty cool dude.
3.  I found a job at PNC Arena, and from that job have paid for my entire mission trip I am going on this summer.  I was able to do that with hockey in a lockout, which caused a lot of my shifts to be cancelled.
4.  I was able to return to work as a counselor at the YMCA.  After a couple months of being a counselor, I was promoted to a site coordinator.  After a couple of months of being a site coordinator, I was offered and accepted a job as a full time Youth Director.

Looking back, I had lots of reasons to be joyful.  But at the time, all I knew was that God had filled me with his joy.  That’s why I believe worshiping God is crucial.  Sure reading your Bible and praying are great things as well, but the equation is simple: worship = joy.  If you are having trouble finding a reason to smile, just worship God and He will give you one.

until next time…