Inward and Outward Worship

So I’m going through the Pure Praise bible study, as mentioned in a previous post or two, and day three seems to be a doozy! If you are interested in the online discussion of the study, head over to TheWorshipCommunity for details.

Today’s topic was on Inward and Outward Worship – two sides of worship that people all-too-often overlook. This is how we worship when we aren’t actively singing, praising, or talking to God.

So, inward worship – how you worship personally, or who you are when no one is looking. The first test of this level of worship is in our minds… what kinds of things do we think about? What movies do we watch? What books do we read? What websites do we visit? Are all of our thoughts held captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 5)?

The second test is centered around the time that you spend with God. Is God just a Sunday morning friend? Someone that you look forward to seeing at church, but once you leave you don’t think of Him again until the next Sunday? Or, is He closer than a brother, someone that you commune with on a daily basis – or a moment-by-moment basis!

We are called – each one of us that looks to Christ Jesus for our salvation – we are called to go out and share His love with a lost and dying world, but we cannot have any effect on this world if we do not know the one who sent us! Our very lives are a testimony to Him, a witness of His love and grace and mercy. His peace during troubled times will cry out to those who are hurting, His acceptance of our past sins are a beacon of hope to those who are lost in their own transgressions. We are not able to live out these things if we never spend time with Him to receive them.

Simply put, we need God in our lives. No one was ever won over to Jesus without the power of His Holy Spirit drawing them to Him. We cannot convince this world of the logic of Jesus any more than we can convince them that the sun brings cold and darkness to the face of our planet. Only God can convince them that He is real, but he allows us to take part in showing this world that through out lives. If God is real to you, it will shine out to those around you. It will cause them to wonder how you can handle things so differently, how you can have such joy in your life, how you can feel peace in the midst of the storms.

So that’s the inward facet… now for the outward!

Outward worship is based in the relationships you have with those around you.

This part was a bit convicting for me… I have been struggling over the past week with the realizations of just how selfish of a being I am. Yes, many of my close friends say what a giving and self-sacrificing person I am (I don’t believe that, but OK) but that is because, um, I like them. I discovered this about myself in the past week or so. If I like you, I will bend over backwards to help you out. I will readily offer up anything I have or I can do to help – joyfully, cheerfully, and without any thought for myself. This is a good thing – this kind of giving is what God has called us to!

The problem that I have, however, is that I only have this attitude of sharing and giving if you are a part of that small circle of people that I spend much of my time with – people I like and call my friends. If I don’t know you very well… well, let’s just way that the attitude is a bit different. Take it a step further. If I actually don’t much care to have you around – simply put, I don’t like you (egad, say it isn’t so) – this attitude does a 180 degree course correction. You don’t even come up on my radar. Thoughts of you don’t even enter into my mind.

Wow, that was a bit of a confession. Yes, my name is Jennifer, and I am an egregious sinner. That means extraordinarily bad.

Outward worship of God is more of the first attitude, but shared with the entirety of the world. We are called to help the helpless, to bring a cold cup of water to the world. To reach out and do whatever is within our power to help them – even if we don’t know or like them. Wow… this was a humbling moment for me. A moment where I was a need to change my outlook on life, on my attitude towards the world around me and – plain and simple – to ask God to help me get this one right!

When we worship God outwardly, we are making sure that our actions to those around us line up with His calling. The bible says that we are known to be His by our love for one another. Love! We should not be known to the world as those “judgmental, self-righteous, right-wing, gay-hating Christians.” No, we should be known because we reach out to help and love those around us. Because we feed the hungry and clothe the poor, give shelter to the homeless, offer to take our invalid neighbor to their doctor’s appointments, watch a single mom’s kids so she can go to work, shovel show off of our neighbors driveway, take a meal to the woman who’s husband just died from liver cancer… the list goes on and on.

We are called to live out our worship of God by loving those around us.

Want to know a cool side effect of all of this love? They will see Jesus shining out through our lives, and they will want to know HIM.

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I have to share an example of this kind of outward worship that has happened in my life recently.

If you have been reading much lately, you know that I am the worship leader of Falcon Ridge Fellowship. Our church was started last August, and we started out meeting in our pastor’s home. Fortunately, their home is laid out in such a way that we could utilize a lot of space, and fit 30-45 people rather comfortably. Within the first month, though, we were outgrowing their home.

One of our elders had been talking to one of the elders at a local Lutheran church – a church who happened to have a historic church building that they weren’t using regularly anymore.

Peace Lutheran Church graciously allowed us to rent out this small, beautiful, historic Little White Church on the Hill (complete with a bell!). This was the first blessing.

Then, they offered us the ability to use their main church facility during the week if we needed it for all-church meetings, etc. Blessing 2.

December was a month of many snows for us… our little white church was inaccessible. 3+ feet of snow made it impossible to hold services there. The generous people at Peace Lutheran invited us to take part in their Christmas Eve services, and then opened up their sanctuary to us to use between their Sunday morning services for as long as we needed it.

We needed it for 2 weeks.

Their sound guy set up everything for us – and then tore it all down before their next service – without even being asked to.

This small local church is living out this idea of Outward Worship – they are living their lives for God’s glory! They have selflessly opened up TWO of their facilities to us, and have asked nothing in return except that we proclaim God’s love to a lost and dying world.

Would that all of us acted in the same manner! To give out of what God has blessed us with, to share in our abundance with those around us. And yes, even in these tough economic times, America is a land of plenty. We live in the midst of abundance that much of the world cannot imagine. We have food to eat, homes to live in, clothes to wear, cars to drive… and we don’t even recognize it. Our minimum wage is more than many people make in a month. Our supermarkets throw out more food each month than many families will see in a year. We live in abundance – we need to learn to let go of some of that and share it with the world around us.

On top of all of that abundance, if we are called according to His purposes – if we have received the free gift of salvation through Christ Jesus, we have been blessed beyond anything we could have even imagined. We are rich in the love of God! We need to share that blessing!

So remember, invite God over and spend some time with Him each day, then go out and the blessing you receive from that time with Him out into a world that desperately needs to see it.