Taking Worship Music for Granted

I was visiting family in Florida for a few days this past weekend, and somewhere in that time frame I was thinking a bit about worship music, about singing to God.  I know its hard to imagine that I was thinking about that :)  Anyways, for a while now I've been doing a lot more assessing, criticizing, questioning, etc. of how worship is done, how it is defined and played out, what role music plays and all that.  I've had my radar up and my magnifying glass out, ready to inspect all the worship songs I hear and identify anything wrong with them, and I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to do things in a worship gathering so that they fit more with what I think worship really should look like versus what it currently looks like in my church and other churches (don't misunderstand me to mean that I think they all do things the same way).

That's just a little context to give you an idea of where I've been at lately, so you can understand why the thoughts I had recently hit me the way they did.

I feel like God really impressed upon me the significance of what it means to sing to Him.  That even though there's more to worship than music, and that even though some "worship" songs are shallow or have wrong theology, I shouldn't miss the fact that singing and playing to Him is a really good thing to do and that He delights in it.  And, that I should take a step back and realize that even though within Christian circles singing and playing in praise and adoration can sometimes be treated as commonplace and not sacred, it is still a sacred thing to do and something that most people in the world don't do.  Think about it, we've got so much entertainment and music out there that is not acknowledging God or praising Him.  Sometimes it intentionally blasphemes Him.  So even though I get discouraged because singing to the Lord isn't always treated as interacting with God, as something holy (set apart), and spiritual and all that, that doesn't change the fact that it is a spiritual sacrifice which God desires of us.

I believe we are all called to sing to Him and about Him and about us in the context of His story (just look at the Psalms or Revelation).  Some of us are even called to do this more often than others and to lead others to do it.  I think God was trying to remind me of that too.  Its a big part of what I do, and what I want to do, and what I think I'm called to.  I would challenge you to remember that to sing or play to the Lord is something you should do intentionally because he deserves it, not just if you feel like it or only if you have a good singing voice.  And then remember that it is supposed to be interaction with our Holy God, let it be something that is set apart, don't treat it like a common everyday action in life.  I would also say don't treat it like when you sing along to any old song radio.  There's a lot more to it than that.  This concludes my stream of consciousness for the moment...