1 Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, 2 ” Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.” 3 He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? 4 For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘ Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ 5 But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or his mother “What you would have gained from me is given to God,” 6 he need not honor his father.’ So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. 7 You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you when he said:
8 “‘ This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; 9 in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’” Matthew 15:1-9 ESV
I hope you read that passage carefully. I think this could be a reflection of the church today.
Sure there are some churches that are genuine, but I think we have come to a point where your average church has problems with breaking from tradition because “This is the way we’ve always done it!”
It works the same way every week. You walk in, there is a specific order to the “service”, you sing some songs you’ve heard a million times already in your life, the pastor gets up and preaches some warm and fuzzy generic message that doesn’t address anything culturally relevant, there is an invitation and benediction and then you leave and go into the world to look just like everyone else in the world.
During service though, you see somber, drab, dull faces (as if they’d rather be anywhere else) and a lack of anything that says I’m worshipping God and I don’t care what anyone thinks of me. Since we are told in the bible we should praise God with any and all instruments available (and loudly I might add – see Psalm 150) with hands raised and dancing and clapping, I don’t see how these things have become so socially unacceptable in church. Unless, the Spirit is not really welcomed in the church.
Ponder that last line a minute. It’s almost as if we are saying “God, we love you, but we’re going to run our church the way we see fit. We will never alter the order of service and will only run from X’ o’clock to x’ o’clock, and we will only use this type of song and anyone that worships you in spirit and in truth will be looked down upon and judged as a disruption to ’service’.”
These are just some points to ponder. We need to break free of the chains of tradition and personal preference and let God lead us in worship.
Honestly, I think we are only worshiping the idea of worshiping God and not really truly worshiping.
What are your thoughts?
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Tags: Christianity, Christians, church, church relevance, faith, family, God, Life, religion, Worship
Good Insight, I need to think on this.
Hi, J2
Good points. Worship is a challenge for me. Sometimes I can really feel I’ve “entered in”, but most of the time I’m struggling with my mind, not to allow it to wander. We’ve been going to a new church lately and the music is nothing if not excellent, so it’s not that. I don’t know what the problem is.
Long time ago I went to a little church in Florida and the worship was so intense. We would dance and wave tambourines with streamers on . . . one guy even had an Israeli flag he’d wave in the back of the church on occasion.
Pretty weird, I guess–especially the flag. I’m sure we were all into the flesh at least a little bit, but I’ve never since seen worship like that and I’ve been to a lot of “wild” churches. You could forget about yourself. That’s the thing, I think.
After a while, the pastor got worried about what people thought and asked us to stop dancing. That was kind of the end of it, even after he said he’d been mistaken and asked us to go back to what we had been doing. Everyone was self-conscious after that. It was never quite the same.
I don’t think you have to dance and wave flags to worship (unless that’s what God wants), but there’s got to be a reason that Christians have trouble with worshiping–truly worshiping God. Maybe we don’t know Him well enough.
God bless,
Cindy
Thank you for your insight Cindy!
You are right, I don’t think you have to do anything that you don’t feel God is leading you to do. But, if you do feel the spirit moving you, you shouldn’t ignore it for fear of looking weird.
Like I said, I think that we are so busy “creating a worship experience” that we forget to actually let God lead the experience and worship in spirit and in truth. Again, worshiping the idea of worshiping God.