Worship as we see nowadays have brought this mindset in people that it has to have music in it. But worship not necessarily needs to have music in it. But, before we even go into what the bible tells about ‘worship’, let me show you what google or the dictionary talks about worship.
Here we see that google defines worship as ‘the feeling or expression of reverence and adoration for a deity’ and so we see that it is an expression or in simple terms, it is an action that we show towards God.
Now let’s see what the bible says about worship. If we see in the old testament of the bible there are many instances where people worshipped God and it did not involve music at all. The very first place where the word worship is used in the Bible is when Abraham tells to his servants regarding sacrificing his son in Genesis 22:5
He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.” Genesis 22:5
Here worship refers to the sacrifice and not music. Likewise, I am going to talk about worship from a theological masterpiece written by one of the greatest apostles of Jesus Christ, Paul. Paul says like this in the book of Romans chapter 12 verses 1 and 2.
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God-this is your true and proper worship.”Romans 12:1
Here, Paul mentions that the true and proper form of worship is to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice. Well, does Paul mean that we must go and sacrifice our bodies into the fire while we are still alive? No, what he means when he says offer your bodies as a living sacrifice is, we must surrender our bodies to God to live a life that will be holy and pleasing. When he says ‘body’ he means what we do with that body, our ‘life’ to be exact which includes, all our actions, reactions, speech, dancing, playing and everything else that we do with this life. But at the end of this statement , he says that the living sacrifice must be “holy and pleasing to God”.
The definite question that you will ask me next is “how are we supposed to find what pleases God?”. Well, seems to me like Paul thought the same way you did and answered that question in the second verse.
“Do not conform to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:2
You may wonder how this verse is supposed to tell us how our lives must be. But, let me ask you a simple question. “How will you please any normal person?”. If you asked me that question I would say “Do what they want”. This applies even to God. We must do what God wants so that our lives become a living sacrifice thus bringing the best form of worship unto Him. This is why Paul writes verse 2 that tells us how we are to find God’s will. He tells here that we need to live a life that is not anyway conformed or related to this world. Rather we need to renew our minds and be transformed. We need to do this every day or in other terms, it is a day to day process that we need to be doing.
What I’m trying to say here is this, when we continuously renew our minds through the holy spirit that we may know the will of God that is perfect and pleasing and choose to do the will of God with the free will that He has given us then our very lives become true worship unto God. When we do the will of God, be it any ministry, any prayer any song you sing, any action you do whatever it may be, it becomes the greatest form of worship we can offer to God when we partner with the holy spirit in doing all these unto God.