Yes, I have been reminded many times now that I haven't post in, as it was said, "FOREVER". Actually it's been a hard couple of weeks, and since I really dislike blogs anyway it is usually the first thing to go. I got that cold that has been going around and then it just wouldn't go away. I really need to learn the meaning of the word stop because I bet if I had just stopped and rested for awhile, I wouldn't still be dealing with the aftermath of the cold. Well, I gave a pretty long comment on another blog, so I'm just going to regurgitate it here so that I can actually say I posted something. It was a pretty interesting discussion to. Or may I just really am that bored right now. But any way, the discussion was on Lizzy's blog
http://raindropsandbutterflies.blogspot.com/so you can check that out if you want but otherwise, my two cents is right here for the viewing. Now I'm going to go sleep so I can get better. Maybe all this was caused by the fumes coming off that picture of the compost pile I had up there for so long......
You know, it’s kind of funny. I can remember having almost this exact discussion with someone probably four or five years ago now and I gave it a good deal of thought then, but I can’t find any of the notes I scratched out about it and my memory is, well, what was I talking about? I think it’s important to step back and put all the building blocks out in view before beginning to build up this thought though. So the question basically was “If we believe that only Psalms should be sung during worship on the Lord’s day, then does that mean that the same applies to private worship.” I know originally you were asking in a broader sense, but maybe just looking at this question will help ascertain the general concept.The first thing I would do in this case is to think about worship. What is it? I wish I really had time to sit down and develop that thought in my own mind….. but just looking at the essence of it, as we’ve been seeing in Romans our relationship to the God of the universe in one of total dependence and we are not by any means deserving of the grace he has given us by sending Christ as a second Adam through whom we have been given abundant grace and the free gift of righteousness. So, in light of this, he is more than deserving of our worship. And as if that isn’t enough, he has given us instructions in the Bible on how he wants to be worshiped and commands to not make our own modifications to these instructions but to worship him that way only; to have our worship centered on God and how he wants to be worshiped, and not on what we think will make for some good ol’ holy worship. I think a lot of the terms that get thrown around in a discussion like this might tend to get muddled together. I’ve been talking about worship, which is also a term many people use loosely for what we do on Sunday morning. It is a component of that, along with other things such as teaching and prayer. Good ol’ Webster’s definition connects the word with a sense of reverence as well as an intense love or admiration. God wants us to worship him and he wants us to worship him his way. He is also a consistent God and doesn’t change the rules on us. So I guess this leads me to my first thought. God’s rules for worship don’t change, if we are going to worship him, we need to do it his way.So what does this imply for the different “types” of worship that have been alluded to earlier? Even though I believe the general structure for worship is consistent, I believe there are three main forms of worship that we see examples of in the Bible. Public worship, family worship, and private worship. And since I probably don’t want to dig too deep of a hole tonight, I’m not really going to go that direction any more than to say that I believe that those three forms of worship are seen in scripture. So yeah, practically that means that I think that if you are worshiping God as a family, you still are under obligation to worship him as he wants to be worshiped because it is still worship and God’s own worship is still sweet to him. The same goes for private worship. Although they are different. You don't have the sacraments in family worship for example. So even though there are three different forms of worship, we are still worshiping the same God who wants to be worshiped his way.So does that mean I should never sing praise songs because I believe that God wants to be worshiped with his Psalms and not songs of our own imperfect creation? This is another great time for….. THE BIG PICTURE. I don’t see any problem singing any kind of song out side of worship. Alright, so you could take that last statement to an extreme but you know what I mean. If you think about it, why would we even worry about singing praise songs outside of worship if we walk around singing… I don’t know, Jingle Bells. If you want to sing something and it’s not something that’s offensive to God, why not? The only thing that is an issue is that when we worship God, we need to worship him his way.Alright, well don’t take my word for all this, but go to scripture and hopefully maybe some little sliver of truth in what I said might help give direction when your looking in scripture. Although there are many of them, my words are not inspired. Or really even all that interesting lol. And the funny thing is, I’ll read this two days from now and see stuff that will make me wonder what I was thinking. As long as the goal is to continue to learn about and become more like Christ, all my errors will be worked out in the end.If you can't tell, I was kind of bored tonight lol.
