Worshiping Attitude

  As I have done some pondering lately, especially on the idea of worship and the attitudes that we carry into it.  I am probably not the only one, when I get to church, my mind is often anywhere but there.  Some of it is because I worked late the night before, or that I have to go to work after church, or some other reason.  There are times where I struggle just to pay attention.  There are many times I wish I could just focus in on the worship service and the Worship of God, but there are other distractions.  Through this thought process, I thought of King Saul and his leading of the nation of Israel.  Saul was in the hill country of Bethel with the Israelite army taking on the Philistines.  As the Philistines were gathering, the Israelite's were becoming outnumbered quickly and Saul got scared.  He waited seven days for Samuel to come and provide a burnt offering to God as an act of worship to God, so Saul did it himself.  As he was finishing up, Samuel showed up and Samuel rebuked Saul.  There are two directions we can take with this story, the first one, is validating ordain-able ministry which is another post, or how we worship God, especially in the time of adversity.  I chose the latter because I think it is applicable.

  If we were to go on reading 1 Samuel, we would find out that after Samuel rebukes Saul and that not long after that he cuts off all communication with Saul (with an exception of the Witch of Endsor incident).  This was a sign of God rejecting Saul and his lineage as king, and that Saul's rule did not finish well.  One of the things that got Saul in trouble is that he not only failed to wait for Samuel to perform the sacrifice, but performed the sacrifice himself.  Not only did Saul get nervous, but he got cold feet and took things into his own hands.  I think when we get nervous and cold feet during life circumstances and with God, we tend to do things our way and develop three dangerous attitudes.

   The first one is that we get desperate.  Not only do we try to do anything and everything, we often become irrational. Its the attitude that something has to be done and I am not going to wait.  We make it all about ourselves and what we can do, and we often do what has worked in the past, but the trick is, it God is not there or in it, we will fall flat on our face.  We often are looking at the gathering army and wondering how its going to be defeated and we get scared. We either carry that hero mentality that I am going to save the day and I am hoping and praying that God shows up through my effort and that He ordains it.  We make it all about us and we fail.  We tend to do this in worship, and thinking worship is about what we can bring to God and how well we can do it.  I don't want to diminish this thought, but true worship is more than just bringing sacrifices, but it is living in right relationship with God and others and that takes trust and sometimes patience and trust.

  The second attitude is the one of defiance.  I work at Wal Mart, so I see defiant toddlers quite often where if they don't get something, it is an all out scream fest.  I have seen some epic tantrums in my day.  How often do we get defiant of God, especially with our worship with God.  One of the causes of the worship wars in the church is because of tantrums we are having with God and others.  In other words we are telling God that we want things our way and we aren't budging.  The only way we will worship God is either through particular song, liturgy, or action.  In essence we are wanting God to play by our rules.

  The third attitude is art of distraction.  This is probably the most popular because we try to make the most of our time and multitask, which in the end, we are not being as productive as we could be.  Another reason that we are distracted during worship, is that we are not getting prepared before hand.  How often do we take time to prepare ourselves for worship.  It is usually a rush to get out of the house so we can just to make it to church on time.  When we are rushed, we aren't focused or prepared.  There is a story of a pastor of a small church who tried everything to get the church to grow, but nothing was working and he was at the end of his rope.  One day he was lamenting to God about this and God spoke and asked if he was ready to stop trying so hard and join in with Him.  God challenged the pastor to spend every Saturday night in prayer and preparation, and the pastor agreed.  When the pastor did this, God took over and the church became one of the fastest growing churches in the United States.  We often let things, not matter how good they are distract us, and we need to remember the Lords prayer of They kingdom come Thy will be done.

  Now these attitudes are far from exhaustive, and they are just many of the ways the enemy tries to distract us from doing the will of the Father