Worshipping God Through Difficult Circumstances
My family is the most devoted group of Marvel fans I know. We flock to the movies together on opening night with pre-ordered tickets, prepared to wait for several after-credit scenes and roll our eyes at individuals not committed enough to stick around. We laugh. We cry. We applaud. One left us defeated and desperate for answers, but we trusted the Marvel Universe to make things right and continued returning to the stories we love.
As I think about the wide variety of feelings and actions involved in our Marvel devotion, I am led to ponder the similar variety in my worship of God.
If you google “How do I worship God through difficult circumstances,” you get over 77 million results filled with strategies for doing so. In the Old Testament, the Israelites asked this question when they had been taken captive in Babylon. They hung their harps in the trees, sat down by the rivers, and wept, saying, “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?”
I’m learning, however, that it’s the wrong question to ask. Because often, whether I realize it or not, I am already worshipping in my lowest moments. I am walking in faith. I am bringing honest emotions before God and trusting Him to meet me in my mourning. Worship is not just raising my hands, smiling, and shouting, “God is good all the time!” Worship includes lament, questions, wailing, and emotional transparency. Bringing these actions and feelings to the One all-powerful enough to handle them is an act of worship and a sacrifice of praise.
So, the better question is “What IS worship?”
The words used for praise, worship, and thanksgiving in Scripture have much deeper and more diverse meanings in their original Hebrew, including honest admission of beliefs, falling down humbly, laying prostrate, throwing or casting something, bemoaning, expressing gratitude, confession, praise, and reverence. This wide array indicates that worship is carried out in many forms. Seen in this context, worship is always the appropriate response to everything in this life – and the one to come – rather than something I must manufacture when my emotions don’t match the status quo.
A poignant and beautiful picture of authentic worship appears in Luke’s gospel when a sinful woman pours her most valuable possession onto the feet of Jesus while weeping tears that bathe His feet. The original language indicates she was sobbing loudly, utterly broken over her sin, and anointing the Son of God with her tears of grief. That was worship.
I can relate. There are times when I crawl into church on a Sunday morning, beaten up by the enemy and burdened with cares of living in a broken world with broken people and my broken dreams. I bow my face full of desperate tears as each song is sung, absorbing lyrics like “All my life you have been faithful,” “I will see your goodness in the land I’m living in,” and “Resurrection power over every circumstance.” I kneel at the altar, crying out to God with very little hope but ever-present faith, and I go home in continued private lament and brokenness before God. And that was worship.
There are also days I come to church filled with awe at how God is moving in my life, chipping away at mountains that have stood in front of me for so long. I raise my hands in reckless abandon, thankful for His power to restore and desire to see all come to know His healing and love. I offer songs of praise and thanksgiving, declaring His completed work on the cross and ongoing work in my life today. In those seasons, my private devotions also echo the victory I am experiencing in Christ. And that too is worship.
My worship is both collaborative and private, in community and solitude, during music and silence, through mourning and dancing.
Max Lucado says, “Worship is the act of magnifying God. Enlarging our vision of him. Stepping into the cockpit to see where he sits and observe how he works.” I worship when I recount stories of His faithfulness and when I reflect on many aspects of his nature. And I worship when I admit my inadequacies and total reliance upon His saving grace and hand of deliverance. My worship is both collaborative and private, in community and solitude, during music and silence, through mourning and dancing. And as Barney Wigit writes, “It could be said that we dance only as well as we mourn.”
When I go to God with my gratitude, it is worship. When I go to God with my lament, it is worship. When I come to God in joy, it is worship. When I come to God in grief, it is worship. I am casting not only my cares but all that I believe and feel at the feet of my Savior. And that is worship.
How are you living a life of worship today despite – or because of – your circumstances?
Read Barney Wigit’s blog post,
“Sometimes You Just Gotta Go Ahead and Cry” here.
Get Just Like Jesus by Max Lucado here.
Beautiful reminder. Thank you!
Thanks for stopping by and reading.:)