I may not know who you are personally, but I question you with this. . . Where is your heart when you worship God? Lately I have been asking God about worship, who is right in worship? Is it Pentecostal rolling round on the floor screaming, is it the conservative Baptist who stands and sings hymns with organs, or maybe the contemporary worship team who has 15 people on the stage playing a different instrument with the decibel level at the peak of safe levels? Who is right? I mean how can so many different styles worship the same God? Can they? Maybe! I am not going to give you any answers, but rather pose questions to you and pray that they make you think bout your approach to worship in the coming times you “draw” near to God. But then again the people that I am hoping to tell this to, they probably won’t ever listen or even hear what I am saying.
There is many people out there, myself included for a long time and maybe even now, that would look down on the Pentecostal worship style as chaotic and weird. Yet as my experience goes on and I dig deeper into the Bible I wonder about it more. What marks the worship of God? Is there one style? Is there too far? Can anything be worship to God? The first thing that comes to mind is that worship is a lifestyle and not something we do only in singing to God. The second is that there is wrong ways of worship, idolatry. But there are no idols in our culture today, right? I thought about it as I was in the coffee shop, where a twins game was on and people were verbally cheering for the twins, or other times when the Viks have been on and people scream wildly when there is a touchdown or a good play. Even better example is a home football game when Crown College Storm scores a touchdown, and you can not talk to the person sitting next to you because of the decibel lever of everyone screaming, jumping up and down, and the while claps of their hands in excitement for their team. But then, these same people that I just saw make a fool of themselves in front of a TV, which doesn’t allow the team to hear their cheers, and in the stands of a football field, stand in the bleachers of chapel and quietly sing. . . The only thing that I can hear is the worship band playing. . . No screams of joy, no exhortations of praise to God, and no wild clapping of hands! What happened? Where did the people in the stands go, where did the people in the coffee shop go? Are they not here… No they are, but they are not singing or they are sitting, where is the passion that I saw when they were watching a game? Should not the God who made the whole world and who came to earth to save my soul be much more worth of our cheers and praise!? To be honest, I think that we are all Pentecostal, but some of us are just not willing to be Pentecostal for God! We are not willing to look like a fool for God, but rather will other places?
Let’s make it clear that I am not against anyone sitting in contemplation of the wonder of God, the screaming praises of his great works, or the wild dancing that David did before the LORD. There is nothing wrong with any of that, but what I am trying to say here in short is that, Pentecostal is not the only form of worship to God and nor is the Conservative Baptist. The real thing that I want you to question is this, why will we cheer before a TV or on a football field, but refuse to in the pews of Church or the bleachers of our chapel?
**Now do not get me wrong and pick and choose things from message that you want to argue about, so listen to what I am trying to say here. You have to understand that I am not singling our one group of people, but rather a hypothetical group. **
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