Selah Update

During the month of July, Saturday night students have been gathering on Tuesday afternoon for Selah, a time of teaching and training on worship and worship celebration. It has been a special time of growth for all of us. We have spent time in the Word studying what worship is, and we have also spent time working as a group to learn how worship expresses itself in music and how to lead others in that.

This last week we talked about the mystery of what is at the center of our worship. We often walk away from a worship service and judge the “success” of the service based on how it affected us emotionally. Worship is “good” when it stirs up something within us. Some feel that there is something very wrong with this kind of statement. It is very popular to say that worship should not be about us at all, that it is only about God. Is this the case? Is worship more about the worshipper or the worshipped?

Though this difficult question is one that I believe I will continue to wrestle with for the rest of my life, I believe scripture does have a few very clear things to say about it. Time and time again, scripture teaches that at the core of a pleasing offering to God is the state of our heart. Specifically, our worship is a response to something God has done or revealed about Himself. In Psalm 90:14 Moses prays “O satisfy us in the morning with lovingkindness/That we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.” Our hearts matter! God satisfies us and we respond in joy. God is glorified when we are satisfied in Him and joy spills out of that.

However, there is another side to that. Notice that it is God’s lovingkindness that satisfies us. Not gifts from Him. Not wealth or health or prosperity but God. Colossians chapter 1 says that Christ is “the image of the invisible God… he is before all things, and in him all things hold together… He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.” Christ is the center of all things. He is the center, the focal point of our worship. He initiated the relationship by dying for us “while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:8). He sustains us as we abide in Him. He fills and sustains us. Because of Him we receive the Living Water, which is the Holy Spirit (John 4:13-14, John 7:37-39). When Christ is at the center of what we do, His glory and our joy because the same thing as we celebrate His saving work in our lives.

Still working it all out…

Grace and peace,
Nick Roland