Worship is surrender. When God’s people proclaim that Jesus is Lord, they proclaim that He is their Master, their Commander, their King. When we sing praise to the Lord, we are declaring that all that the Lord does is good and right and glorious. And this includes all that the Lord has done in the world, in history, and in our lives. He is Lord, and He has commanded every atom, every detail, and it has obeyed. Nothing is an accident. Nothing is random. Nothing is out of place. This includes your past, things done to you, friends and family lost, every hardship, every missed expectation.
Everything is meaningful because everything was meant. It was intended by our Loving Father, our Good and Glorious Lord. And worship acknowledges this fact. To worship is to bow down, to lay all objections down, to surrender everything to the One who has done it all in masterful perfection.
You cannot truly worship God while holding anything back. You cannot fully surrender if you are withholding anything from God. You cannot truly submit, if there is anything in your heart that resists the sovereign rule of the Lord. So, are you clutching at anything? Is there a particular difficulty in your family that eats at you? Strained or broken relationships? Loneliness, sickness or suffering? A job loss or being passed over for promotion? Regrets? Failures? To worship the Lord is to lay all of it down and praise Your King. Praise Him for all of it. Praise Him in all of it.
We do not worship an impersonal will. We do not worship a faceless power. We worship the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We worship the One who was born of a virgin, the One who lived as one of us yet without sin, the one who was crucified for our sins, the One who was raised in glory, the One who is seated at the right hand of Glory. We worship the One who loved us and gave Himself for us. When we surrender, we surrender to the One who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all.
Christians do not surrender to the void. Christians do not surrender to incoherence or apathy or stoicism. Christians surrender to a Love that is stronger than death. Christians surrender to pure and unending Goodness. Worship is Christian surrender to God’s most wise counsel – a perfect plan that cannot be improved upon, that is saving us and bringing us to an unimaginable glory. So come let us worship and bow down. He is our Maker. He knows what He is doing.
Photo by Jens Lelie on Unsplash
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