As I continue to write about worship, I keep coming back to one question.
What IS worship?
I’ve googled it a couple times and looked up some verses about it.
I found a general definition.
(noun) The feeling or expression of reverence and adoration for a deity: “ancestor worship”.
(verb) Show reverence and adoration for (a deity); honor with religious rites.
One of the top google hits had this to say.
The English word “worship” comes from two Old English words: weorth, which means “worth,” and scipe or ship, which means something like shape or “quality.” We can see the Old English word -ship in modern words like friendship and sportsmanship – that’s the quality of being a friend, or the quality of being a good sport.
So worth-ship is the quality of having worth or of being worthy. When we worship, we are saying that God has worth, that he is worthy. Worship means to declare worth, to attribute worth. Or to put it in biblical terms, we praise God. We speak, or sing, about how good and powerful God is.
I found Scriptures about worship.
O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before our Lord our maker.
Psalm 95:6
God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth.
John 4:24
This all still leaves me puzzled. Technically it answers my question but I’m still not happy with the answer.
My absolute favorite devotion is My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers. It’s the devotional I always return to and it usually kicks me right in the butt. I found that he had this to say.
Worship is giving God the best that He has given you.
I don’t know that I’ve heard it put any better way. Nor could I sum it up any better.
God has given me much, and He expects much in return. The gifts He has given me, I am expected to turn around and give them right back. For me personally, this involves
- Music
- Love
- Grace
- Compassion
What’s the best God has given you?
It seems we only really pull back and consider worship when we study the word. It’s crazy how synonymous worship is with music. It just goes to show the power of music but still…it’s not sufficient to encapsulate worship.
All of the definitions you found are pieces of the puzzle but ultimately I see worship as the posture of your heart towards an object of affection.
“The posture of your heart.” What a beautiful definition.
What an awesome way to define worship – “Giving God the best that He has given You.” I believe the best God ever gave me was His Son Jesus, who died on the cross so that I might live. I’ve come to understand that if God does nothing else for me, then that alone is reason enough to worship Him!
So true. 🙂
This is really interesting- that’s a question I’ve thought about a lot- “what is worship”- because it seems like American Christian culture uses the word “worship” to mean music. o_o
A while ago I looked up all the places the word “worship” is used in the bible- in the Old Testament it was used in 3 contexts:
1. bowing down/ some other kind of physical action to show respect for God
2. attending religious ceremonies/ making a sacrifice at the temple/ etc
3. turning away from God and worshiping other gods
(I only saw the word “worship” connected to music 1 time, Psalm 100:2. The Old Testament definitely talks about music a lot, it’s totally a good thing we should do for God, but it was not referred to by the term “worship”.)
In the New Testament it was a lot harder for me to come up with a summary of what “worship” meant. Things seemed more vague. For example, you have people “worshiping” Jesus after he performs a miracle, but it doesn’t say what they ACTUALLY DID. (In contrast, the Old Testament would always say “bow down and worship” or something like that- a description of what they were physically doing.)
I like concept “giving God the best that he has given you”- yes, that is TOTALLY how we should live. But I don’t think that’s the definition the bible uses when it has the word “worship.” (Which is fine, language changes, words have different meanings, whatever. But it’s important to realize that when you’re studying the bible.)
Thanks for sharing all that. It is frustrating when the Bible mentions worship but doesn’t specifically say HOW. I suppose because there’s no one way to do it.