When The Music Fades

We grappled with Rick Warren’s idea of worship this week. Warren expands the idea of worship beyond church walls and daily prayer requests to our everyday, practical lives. Not a new concept, but compellingly stated in The Purpose Driven Life.
The purpose of worship is to please God, not ourselves. Anything that is pleasing to God is worship. Warren’s challenge is to make everything we do pleasing to God and, therefore, worship. We all bought in to the concept – that’s the easy part. It was the practical application that brings us up short. We each talked about how hard it is to keep God front and center as we go about our daily lives – how God pops up every once in a while during the day, but is not the strong, constant presence that Warren describes.
As I sat in our circle, I was struck more and more with how central the idea of relationship is to making worship practical in our lives. Worship doesn’t exist outside of a relationship. Pleasing God is about being in relationship with God. First and foremost that’s what God wants and finds pleasing. The stronger my relationship with Jesus has become, the more practical my worship has become. God is much more present to me in every facet of every day of my life as I have deepened my relationship with my God. And my relationships with others – especially my wife, my brothers in small group, and the community at Nativity – have been key to helping me deepen my relationship with Jesus.
Pleasing God is the purpose of our lives. We please God by being in relationship with God. The practical expression of that relationship is lived out everyday through our relationships with others. Worship is about relationships. And as the song says, when the music fades and all is stripped away, Jesus looks into our heart and it’s all about our relationships.