What is Worship...???...

I had one of those moments today. The kind of moment that sends a chill down your spine and you feel in the very presence of God. What caused, or more accuartely contributed to this? We were playing Agnus Dei, a song that has been played forever a million different ways. When we play songs like this, I need to sit back and really read the words and think about them. If don't they will just come out and it will be like a machiene running and not worship. We have rehearsed the song played it before, and the same result everytime. Right at the climatic moment, HOLY, everyone is on a different chord, the band falls apart. Rehearsal was no different, horific. But my prayer tonight was different. Not mistake free music, but facilitating an environment for worship. It came time to it, from almost nothing musically (one guitar and one vocal) to a huge hit, of bass, drums, two heavily distorted guitars, and the chill was sent through my body. That is all I ever wanted to acheive as a band, but had a revelation. I wanted it because it was musical excellence and sounds good, and God showed me the real reason for it. Facilitating an environment for worship. When that is your goal, it seems everything else falls into place (you still have to practice and prepare). There is a huge spiritual movement going around our society today. Even non-christians are trying to be more spiritual in their lives. You see Hollywood inventing religions and watch Oprah or whatever and everyone needs to be more spiritual and at peace. I see this same effect taking place in younger generation christians. I have talked to younger christians lately that believe worship to God has to be soft and somber, a very spiritual aspect to it (spirtual in the sense of how I mentioned before, at peace and soft). I have been told that music with solos, or with loud distortion guitar is not real worship. It is worldly and gets in the way of someone's heart opening to enter God's prescence. I think that is non sense. Music enhances and magnigys every emotion. Have you ever tried to watch a scary moment of your favorite scary movie without the music, not so scarry. Have you ever seen a piece put together by a network of a recent champion sports team? Something that is just a game can almost make you cry because the music they put to it magnifies the emotion so much. I belive that is why we use song to worship. IT allows us to open up and let all our emotions come out to sing praise to our creator. If that wasn't true, every church would just replace their worship time with poetry reading prasing the Lord.
The kind of music you like will probably facilitate the best environment for you to worship. If you like country, go get a country worship album, if you like rock and roll go get one, alternative, organ and choir, it doesn't matter. The sound and the music doesn't matter. Third Day's recording of Agnus Dei is amazing, but when listening and worshiping along with it, it isn't the verse, the chorus when I feel closest to God, it is in the guitar solo (be careful that isn't real worship to a lot of people). The music creates the perfect environment for me to enter an intimate time of worship with God. I love Kutless' new worship album (Strong Tower). I get chills every track. It has, musically speaking, hard and soft moments. From rockin', distorted guitars, to nice acoustic moments with great vocal harmonies. You get both in their first track which is an arrangement of "We Fall Down." For me I like quiet moments of just lifting my voice, and then I like climatic huge moments where I feel passionate and my whole body is involved in worship. If you are involved in leading worship, you need to focus on musical excellence, but at the same time we need to check ourselves and see why we are striving for that. Is it for us, or for him? In today's world, their is so much good worship music available to us in so many different varieties of music. You can get classic hymns, or modern rock. We should not knock the way people worship, but embrace it. As I have told you I have been criticized of my worship to hard and showy. I have also criticized the other side as being boring and lacking passion. I think we all need to just embrace our time of worship, and go somewhere that facilitates that environment for you. As long as our heart is right for worship, it doesn't matter if we have a 50 piece band, or a kazoo. It is our heart at the time we enter that worship.