In a recent post, I mentioned how our worship leadership practicum class is studying The Heart of the Artist by Rory Noland this quarter. It is essentially about just that - focusing on building and maintaining a "healthy heart" as an artist. It addresses real-life, practical, personal issues of being an artist or musician involved in ministry.
I once heard a great quote from someone who said, "The health of your heart determines the quality of your heart." I think this is true for ministry, too. We can say, "The health of our heart and relationship with Jesus determines the quality of our ministry." In Matthew 12 in the section about "The Tree and Its Fruit," it says, "Your words show what is in your hearts. Good people bring good things out of their hearts, but evil people bring evil things out of their hearts." (12:34b-35, CEV) The state and health of our hearts and emotions are so important.
One of the chapters in Noland's book is entitled "Managing Your Emotions." In it, he says, "to avoid being controlled by our feelings, I suggest we channel them into worship. We need to make a commitment to worship the Lord regularly." Worshiping re-centers, re-aligns, and often calms our anxious hearts. Have you ever experienced this? We need to be proactive about worshiping God.
Noland continues by providing a definition of worship from William Temple that I found very thought-provoking:
"Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose - and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin."
How about you?
What do you think about this definition of worship? How would you define worship? Do you have anything to add?
just a thought, but did you ever notice all the different ways in which we use the word “worship” as well…worship as a verb, a noun, and adjective…not to mention category…
Yes, I know what you mean. I just started that book “The Dangerous Act of Worship” by Mark Labberton, and he mentions the importance of worship as a verb through the way we live our lives out. Worship shouldn’t just be contained in the church or simply the label we place on the music part of the service. Mark said that through worship, we re-align with God and deny our selfish tendencies. It’s “dangerous” because the cost is high and it is radical, but we’re called to live transformed lives and to become more and more like Jesus. Thank you for reading and for your input!