{"id":11557,"date":"2015-12-17T01:00:20","date_gmt":"2015-12-17T09:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/?p=11557"},"modified":"2015-12-07T22:51:46","modified_gmt":"2015-12-08T06:51:46","slug":"reflections-on-the-collegelife-praise-ministry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/2015\/12\/17\/reflections-on-the-collegelife-praise-ministry\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections on the CollegeLife Praise Ministry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>by Samuel Chung<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve been a part of the music ministry since my second year of college and God has definitely matured me in many ways throughout these years. The deeper understanding of Scripture and theology has helped to bring greater meaning to the songs that we sing. The memorable melodies have helped to remind me of specific and necessary truths about our God. It is evidence for me to reflect on John 4:23-24, where it says \u201cBut the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.\u201d This account with Jesus and the woman at the well shows that worshiping God requires an intricate balance of both spirit and truth, where a greater emphasis on either will offset the scale. If we focus too much on truth without the spirit, we can easily become Pharisees or intellectual robots who merely give assent to the truths without a change of heart. If we focus too much on spirit without the truth, we may very well be worshiping something other than the one true God (although it may even feel like we are) because of the lack of a clear definition of who He is.<\/p>\n<p>A question I want us to consider is: What is worship? I believe that it\u2019s a term that we use so often that we don\u2019t consider the context in which we use it as much as we do. For example, I hear people say, \u201cThat worship set was ____.\u201d or \u201cHow is the worship team doing?\u201d We also have songs that say \u201cI will worship with all of my heart\u201d and \u201cWorship His holy name.\u201d In each of those statements, what did it mean to worship? To clarify, I am not saying that the examples above are incorrect, but I am saying that we often use them without thinking very deeply about it, which is something we need to do more. Depending on the context of conversation, the definition ranges from a person\u2019s overall heart attitude to something specific as the time of singing at church. More often than not, I\u2019ve noticed that we utilize only the latter definition of worship. Once again, the statements above are not necessarily wrong, but I believe that the focus has become too narrow when it comes to our understanding of worship.<\/p>\n<p>In the Bible, we see that the word worship often incorporates both ideas of an inward adoration and an outward expression of the adoration such as falling prostrate in humility (Genesis 24:26, Job 1:20, Psalm 95:6), singing (Psalm 29:2, Psalm 96:1), and paying homage (Matthew 2:11). Worship is not just about the music or a feeling. As stated before, it requires a combination of truth and spirit as well as a combination of inward and outward adoration to God.<\/p>\n<p>Why am I being so nitpicky about one word? Isn\u2019t it just semantics? It\u2019s important for us to consider how we are using this term because proper usage of it displays a stronger understanding of the meaning of that word. Worshiping God is so much more than the singing. It should be our lifelong commitment to acknowledge and adore God in whatever we do. We worship with our whole life, and not just a part of it. It isn\u2019t confined to a specific action such as singing, but should be a characteristic of who we are. As we gather as a church, we are engaging in corporate worship from the moment you step into the doors until you leave. We can worship through corporate reading of Scripture, singing songs of praise, hearing the Word of God preached, giving of offerings, praying in meditation, and even interacting with the people next to us. It all comes down to our hearts being prepared to acknowledge our need of God\u2019s grace and give Him the adoration that He deserves for Christ\u2019s death and resurrection!<\/p>\n<p>In conclusion, let\u2019s consider the common Christian term of worship and find ways to portray its full definition when we use it. Let us worship our God in spirit and in truth from our hearts, leading to our external displays of affection to Him!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Samuel Chung I\u2019ve been a part of the music ministry since my second year of college and God has definitely matured me in many ways throughout these years. The deeper understanding of Scripture and theology has helped to bring greater meaning to the songs that we sing. The memorable melodies have helped to remind [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":469,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,103],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-affinity-groups","category-college"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/469"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11557"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11578,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11557\/revisions\/11578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}