Worship: An expression of adoration

Over the past couple of years I have been involved in music at our church, and have consequently had many conversations about how we worship God in this context. I have been surprised at how many people have said to me that they don't know why we sing at church... and yet we do it every week for a decent proportion of the service. To me that's worrying.

So I've been pondering this notion of worship, and I know that worship is much more than singing - it's a life-attitude of glorifying God. But there's something about music that I've always felt is a special way of praising God. I've just struggled to articulate it. I think I can now, so here goes...

As a church we pray in thanks, in confession, and in supplication, but so rarely do we pray in pure adoration of God. Singing as a congregation is an opportunity to drop everything where we are (physically and spiritually) and give God praise for who he is and for what he has done.

It's certainly possible to worship God in other ways, but through the unique tool of music we can focus on God and sacrifice something of ourselves to Him in that moment. And that's just what God wants - our attention. It's like listening to a friend with our full attention. By doing this we are saying through our actions, "You are important enough to me to deserve my undivided attention". God can speak to us, but he wants our attention first so that we are ready to hear his voice.