What is worship? 

Many of you know that I started off the year 2025 in bed… literally. 2 days after Christmas I was hit with influenza A. It’s been a very long road to recovery from that and I’m still not quite back to 100%. During those weeks I was sick I ended up losing my voice. Now for anyone who has ever met me you all know that I am a talker. So for me to go weeks without talking well that’s just torture. Here’s the thing though… maybe just maybe the good Lord in his infinite patience and wisdom shut my voice off so that I would be able to listen to him. Hmmmm. I also love to sing. Praising Jesus at the top of my lungs in my car is the best. But I couldn’t talk so I couldn’t sing. So how can I worship God without singing? One night I was at Celebrate Recovery… shameless plug here New Life CR meets Fridays at 7 at the Dream center for anyone struggling with any hurts, habits, or hangups… anyways during the worship songs I so badly wanted to sing. And I couldn’t. And it made me mad. But then in my grumbling I hear the Spirit encourage me to just pray. For a moment I was tempted to stay in my grumbling grumpiness and just sit down and pout like a 4 year old because I can’t do what I want to do. But I didn’t I said okay Lord have your way in me. Then the words of the worship songs being sung I turned into prayers over everyone there. And wow the Lord was mooooving. 

I believe it was just a couple days later at Capital Church Pastor preached about Worship… I was like okay God I’m seeing a theme here… when Pastor spoke about how we worship by doing what God created us to do it hit me. Hey that’s what I’m doing! I’m worshipping God by stepping out of my comfort zone to do this blog. I’m worshipping God by praying… by laughing… by well just by living I am worshipping God. I worship God by working with people with disabilities and helping to support and encourage them. I worship God when I play with kiddos in Nursery. Pastor also said that the main thing is to worship from your heart. Worship is an all day every day thing. Not just a Sunday morning thing.

Now I was curious how the world would define worship so I looked up the word “worship” on dictionary.com. One definition defines worship as “adoring reverence or regard.” And then I read further to find listed synonyms and the first one I see is  “idolatry.” Wait what? You guys when I think of the word “idolatry” the first thing that comes to mind is things like the golden calves the Israelites worshipped in the Old Testament.  A couple years ago I was in a women’s Bible study and we studied the book “No Other Gods” by Kelly Minter. One of the biggest take aways from that book was that idols are really anything that takes our focus away from God. Tv, books, sports, work, friends, phones, seriously so many I could go on for pages and pages but that would be boring and I would definitely lose your attention! So how do we keep our focus on God and our hearts open to him? We can humble ourselves and ask Him. We can open up his word and ask Him to meet us there. We can go to church and spend time with His people. Some of my all time favorite memories are just doing life with other believers. 

There’s a song by Haley Jones called Not today. “Cause my worship is my weapon that I fight my battles with” so worship is also a weapon. Worship turns my depression and anxiety into joy and peace. Worship is contagious… as contagious as I was with the flu but way better. Go be contagious and worship today.