The role music plays in worship-part 11

         A true worshipper not only sings God’s “words” but a true worshipper obeys God’s “words.” That’s simple—simple enough for a Kansas farmer, like me, to understand. True worship is not only singing what He says but also doing what He says. I remember a little chorus we used to sing when we attended church in Newport News Virginia that sums it up quite well. It goes like this, “When God tells you what to do you’d better do it, and you’d better do it. It doesn’t pay to disobey that’s all there’s to it… like Jonah you’ll find out the hard, hard way.”
       When we are in God’s house worshiping, our musicing unto God should prepare us to go out into the world to serve and obey God. It is impossible to serve if we refuse to obey. It is also impossible to be unless we do. However, we must be a Christian before we can effectively do what a Christian does.
       Christ centered musical worship should not be disconnected from the reality of Christian living. Christian musical worship does not send us into a trance, place us on a spiritual high, or be a detachment from the realness of living in the material world. Christians must live in the world (cosmos 2889), but they are not “of the world” (the aion 165– the age or the world system). They are in the material world (kosmos) but they are not of the “world system.” In St. John 17:11 Jesus said, “And now I am no more in the world (kosmos), but these are in the world (kosmos), and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.” In chapter 17 verse 15 Jesus states, “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world (kosmos), but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.”
       In verse 18 of this same chapter Jesus gave us the essence of what worship means when he said, “As thou hast sent me into the world (kosmos), even so have I also sent them into the world (kosmos). What does this mean? Romans 12:1 says “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”
       A true worshiper is willing to present his or her life as a living sacrifice not merely a dead one. This Christian is not just a believer who maintains a list of things he will not do. Instead, a life of true worship is about what we will do because we love Him. What we do for God does not make us Christians, but it is an affirmation to God that we will go and serve and spend and be spent for the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ because we love Him..
       In the world of honey bees, a true worshiper would be likened to the category of bees called "workers". Workers do, drones don’t. Among honey bees the Queen bee is important and lets all the other bees know it. So, if we are true worshipers of God, we will not only come in to worship but also go out to be “workers”.