Worship in the Daily

Have you ever wondered what other Christians’ lives look like in different cultures on a daily basis? In America, it is easy to see how your friend can share Christ with her coworker or how a young mom can sing a worship song to her child while she is putting him down for a nap. We are blessed with the ability to serve and worship our God freely. But what about the elderly lady in Asia who tends to her family farm, just like she has done for the past 60 years? What does worship look like in her life? What about the teenage boy in the Middle East who accepted Jesus but cannot share his faith because it is illegal? How does he worship?

It has been easy for me to compartmentalize worship in my life. Worship is the songs we sing before the sermon at church or the hymns we hum to Jesus during our quiet time. Worship leaders are the singers on stage on Sunday mornings or the writers of the Christ-centered music on the local “positive listening” radio station.

While these things are true, we must be careful not to limit our worship (or our idea of worship) to the songs we sing about Christ or to the people holding the microphones on stage. If you are a Christian, you are a worship leader. If you are a Christian, you are called to live a life of worship, every day, with music or without. Although music is one way to express worship to God, worship is really about the orientation of our heart in relation to our holy God. Worship is an attitude of the heart and the focus of your mind (Romans 12:1-2). When your mind is on Jesus and wanting to please Him, actions of worship (which look significantly similar to acts of obedience) will follow no matter where you are or what you are doing.

When I was 17, I surrendered my life to “music ministry”. I labeled myself as a worship leader and began singing, leading songs, making albums, touring and writing music that reflected my title. After a few years, the Lord took my profession of music away and placed me in the middle of a regular 9-to-5 job. Although I continued as a “worship leader” on Sunday mornings, the Lord began to teach me the importance of leading worship as a lifestyle, on or off stage. He taught me how to be an example of worship without using a single musical note. Being a worship leader is showing Jesus to those around you, leading others to Him through your actions. For me, it was giving Scripture to the coworker who had just lost a family member. It was working with excellence at the most menial tasks. It was starting a small group in the back room of our office just as much as it was leading a congregation in music.

We are all called to bring God glory regardless of our talents, positions, labels or our spheres of influence. You may be taking a year off of school to work and travel. You may be in the midst of your corporate job, wondering how you can make an influence for Jesus in a secular environment. You may be a mother trying to make it through the day without your children fingerpainting the wall. Our lifestyles are as unique as our own fingerprints. It is easy to look at our pastors and their wives, Christian “celebrities” or Bible study authors and see how they can live out worship in the day to day. Often it is hard to find how to do that in our own messy, crazy, chaotic, unpredictable lives. That is, until we begin to look at our circumstances as opportunities--opportunities to serve, share and love. That is worship.

Romans 5 explains that, as the Church, we are to work together in unity and harmony to glorify God with one voice. That means, essentially, not everyone is doing the same thing, but everyone is singing the same song. The beauty of harmonies is that everyone sings different notes, but it comes together as one layered, deep, beautiful sound. Using our unique lives to join in this worship song to Jesus is what the Church is supposed to look like. Whatever area God has positioned you in is the place He has called you to glorify Him with your life and every detail woven throughout it.

While the elderly lady in Asia is singing praises in her native tongue to Jesus as she plows a field, she joins in the same chorus as the boy in the Middle East who prays silently in his closet in the middle of the night. While I write this blog, you cook a meal for a sick friend, a mother teaches her child her favorite Bible verse, while another sister is sharing Jesus with a neighbor. We are all offering up worship, through our minds, actions and lives. When your life is surrendered to His cause, you add another beautiful note to this universal song that sings the praises of our Savior. He is worthy of our “life songs”, from beginning to end. May every action be for the glory of Jesus, because He is the one that can take our efforts and make it matter for eternity. Worship where you are and with everything you have.

"Whatever you do, do it for the glory of God." Colossians 3:23a