BEING worship, not DOING worship

For many years, I was blessed to have a great group of men to meet with on a weekly basis. We all knew each other from working in the same industry, but we had some diverse backgrounds.
One guy was a former atheist with a law degree from UC Berkeley. If you pressed him hard enough, he'd tell you it was probably a better description to say he was agnostic. But while going to school at Berkeley, it was cooler to say he was an atheist. So that's what he called himself at the time.

Another guy was a former addict. He came to Christ in response to his sobriety and received strength through his faith in the Lord. He had an intensity and commitment to Christ that was inspiring.

We also had a pastor's son in the group. He had been a Christian as long as he could remember, and provided a contrast to the rest of us. Since the rest of us came to Christ later in life, there were experiences and understandings that were divergent.

The fourth member was a former bartender. He had spent most of his life chasing a good time, only to find out there was no prize at the end road. Reading the Bible was something very much outside his comfort zone, and a foreign concept. Yet he was there every week, at 6:45 in the morning.

Then there was me. I grew up around the idea of God and Jesus, but never did anything about it until adulthood.

We attended very different types of churches: Presbyterian, Charismatic, Congregational, and Non-Denominational. We were an eclectic group, with wide theological perspectives. We did not agree on everything, but that's probably what I enjoyed the most. For over three years, we met once a week, almost every week. During that time, we got to see each other grow and evolve in our individual faith. We have shared emotions and experiences that were never shared with other people. It was an amazing time, and I miss the meetings very much.

Out of everyone there, the former bartender was the newest in his understanding of Christ. He loved meeting and talking, but never seemed sure if he wanted to take the leap and become a follower of Christ. It was such a sharp contrast from everything he had known that he didn't even know what it meant to be a "Christian".

Finally, after coming to our meetings for over two years, he was ready to make a decision. He told me that he was ready to go "deeper" and take it to the next level. That prompted him to ask me the question I had been waiting a very long time to hear. It was the question I had been preparing to answer since he first showed up. His question was, "So what am I suppose to do now?"

My mind and mouth were going a million miles a minute, rattling off every discipleship step I could think of: Read your Bible more… go to church more… GET BAPTIZED… start serving at church… memorize scripture… PRAY more… do this… do that… blah, blah, blah. I was like a human Gatlin gun. I don't think he knew what hit him.

It was at about this point that his eyes started glazing over and rolling into the back of his head. I could literally see his face starting to fall. When our conversation started, he was excited and energized. Now he seemed burdened and stressed. It was like I sucked all the oxygen out of the room, then directly out of his lungs. What was I doing?

I stopped talking for a moment. I just stood there, silent, staring at my friend. He stood there waiting me to finish my thoughts. But I didn't know what to say. All I knew was that I had just taken all his ambition and crushed it like my three year old stomping on a lady bug.
That is when it hit me. That is when I realized what I was suppose to say. Suddenly, I blurted out something along the lines of, "Forget everything I just said. Erase it from memory. Here is what you need to do: Love the Lord with all your heart, mind and soul. Make God the focus of everything you do and every decision you make. Make Him the center of your marriage, your family, your job, and your life. If you do that, all the other things will follow. If you truly make Him the center, then you'll search out for ways to be His servant. But for now don't worry about the steps… just love Him."

I tell you this story for two reasons. The first one is because we are doing a series about worship in our church right now (www.impact.cc), and for me, this story provides a definition of what true worship is really about. Worship is about living your life for God. It is not about songs, music, cool stage designs, or any of that. Worship is a state of being, not a singular instance of doing. When I first started providing answers to my friend, I was giving him things to do. I was giving him chores. That's not what he needed. He need to know how to be.

In Colossians 3, Paul talks a little about this idea:
"Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him".

Paul doesn't give a laundry list of tasks in this scripture. What he provides instead is an example of attitude. This is the second reason for writing of this experience…

A number of years ago, I went through a dark time in my faith. As an analytical person, I always search for concrete answers. I prefer to operate in an atmosphere of guidelines and defined boundaries. This keeps life simple because there are fewer complications when there are no grey areas. I approached my walk with Christ in this same way.

In essence, I reduced my faith to a checklist of tasks. The way I saw it, the more things I checked off the list, the "better Christian" I became. As a competitive person, this worked well for a while. It provided many benefits by giving a clear path for growth and a framework for staying on track. Furthermore, it gave me a measuring stick and goals. These are not bad things.
The problem arose when these individual tasks became my primary focus. Instead of being tools to help me grow in my relationship with God, these tasks took the place of God. I was task-oriented and not God-oriented.

Things got even worse when I realized I was failing on the list. I stopped making progress, and even backtracked a little bit. This was devastating because the goals had replaced my faith in God. They became the entire basis, outlet and expression of my spirituality. If I was failing at this list, then my faith was failing as well.

Luckily, God gave me a way out. One of the awesome things about God is how he chooses to guide us. Personally, I think God has a very ironic sense of humor. I know that might not be theologically provable, but I truly believe it deep down. For you see, it was that former bartender… the one I told to ignore all the tasks and simply "Love the Lord", that showed me the error of what I was doing. At lunch one day, I told him how I felt. I told him that I felt like I was stumbling; I was depressed about being such a flawed individual.

His response was fairly simple. He told me to stop beating myself up. He told me that I was focusing on the wrong things. Although he didn't use the exact same words, his message was the same as what I had told him earlier that year. He was telling me to just love the Lord… make God the focus… Stop making the focus of my worship the doing of tasks, and make my worship being a follower of Christ. Worshipping God is not about a single action. Worshipping God is about a life dedicated to the continual expression of loving Him.