Embrace Worship: Holy and Wholly

While we might be inclined to ask why we should pray when we think about lifting up a request to God, it’s probably not our habit to ask why we should worship each time we come before God. 

To ask ‘why pray’ often names a nagging whisper of wonder about the effectiveness of prayer.
While asking ‘why worship’ can reveal a deeper curiosity about who God is.

To ask ‘why pray’ is to come close to articulating the question behind the actual, more haunting question: Will God care enough to answer me?
While asking ‘why worship’ might uncover a deeper truth about who we are.

But, I suspect, the majority of Christians never think to ask the question ‘why worship’ – much to our detriment. Because if we did, we’d realize we have been created for worship (Isaiah 43:7; Ephesians 1:12). If we did any digging into what it means to worship our Creator, we’d awaken to the reality of His greatness and holiness and absolute ‘otherness’ – and our praises would never cease.

I also suspect that simply reading that last line causes many to cringe or roll their eyes at the thought of having to sing a hundred million holy-holies for all eternity – because that has become our view of worship. Cute little cupids floating on clouds with harps singing forever. 

Not only is that an unbiblical view of eternity, it actually devalues worship – its beauty, its freedom, its holiness. It’s a picture that works against what we’ve been created for. It demonstrates our human propensity to worship things other than our Lord. And it reveals how easy it is to fall into ruts we call worship that don’t actually reflect what Matt Redman famously dubbed the heart of worship. 

And so, I’m setting out to ask, most earnestly and with a craving for depth:
What is worship?¹ 

[Note: Each week this summer we’ll dig into one facet of worship, which is to say that no single post will encapsulate all of worship on its own. Rather, we’ll uncover a facet a week and hope that by the end of summer, we’ll have a fuller, deeper, truer understanding and experience of worship.] 

Facet One: Praise

Only God. I could not have foreseen how our prayer series would be woven right into this first post on worship by the element of praise. And I’m not sure how to split hairs over which praise is prayer and which is worship – or that we even need to. I mean, we can praise through speaking and singing. In fact, we can praise God with how we live – in the ways we display His love and light to others.

In other words, whether we’re lifting hands or bowing heads, we are called to praise God:

“Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.”

Psalm 150:6

At its core, praise is adoration – it’s the overflow of our hearts toward God. Our love. Our confession. Our reverence. Our hope. Our trust. We praise God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – for who He is. 

And if we need a little boost for words, we can scour Scripture. It’s packed with passages that point us to this way of worshipful praise.²  We can pray these words of praise. Or allow them to become our worship. We can even begin praising as a practice that turns into heartfelt prayer that becomes full-on adoration!

Friends, no matter where we are or how we’re feeling, God calls us to worship Him with praise – because it’s for our good and His glory, so that we won’t worship something or someone other than Him, and because, very simply, “He alone is your God, the only one who is worthy of your praise” (Deuteronomy 10:21 NLT). 

Worthy

There’s a moving scene in Revelation five when John’s vision takes him into God’s heavenly throne room, and he sobs at the realization there is no one worthy to open the scroll that God holds in His right hand (v.4). John knows God’s words need to be revealed, yet no one on earth or in heaven is worthy enough to do so – that is, except Jesus, the Lion and the Lamb (vv.5-6). 

The Word of God, alone, possesses the honor and ability of taking the words of judgment directly from God’s hand and delivering them upon those who refuse His Father. And He is the only One worthy of our worship. That makes Him worth the effort we need in order to offer Him proper, worthy, personal affection.³ 

I’m guessing most of us in this space agree with these facts. Even if we haven’t thought about what worship is, we can know that Jesus is the only One worthy of it. But let’s get honest – do we actually give Jesus our worship?

First, it’s good to acknowledge that worship isn’t only singing. Or only praising. In fact, we could say that “the essence of worship is the inner experience of treasuring the true beauty and worth of God.”⁴

Do we give Jesus our worship?

Next, we need to know we’ve been created to worship – and we do! All the time, we worship. And if you want to know what you worship, “simply follow the trail of your time, your affection, your energy, your money, and your allegiance.”⁵ Follow the trail and you’ll find a throne, and whatever or whoever sits upon that throne is what you worship.

Here are two examples – neither of which are meant to elevate any particular object of worship over others, and both of which, I can be guilty of devoting too much of myself to. So these are for the sake of illustration: 

1. Musician celebrities – picture concerts with fans on feet, singing loudly with abandon, swaying with arms raised or flames from lighters fluttering high above, clapping and shouting for the one on stage – some even be seen weeping out of sheer reverence.
2. Professional athletes – imagine people paying gobs of money to see their favorite teams, showing their allegiance by wearing team colors and clothes, calling out words of great adoration to their favorite players – going so far as to tell the whole world about this player they love.

Y’all, we worship! We identify what seems worthy and we give it our all. And while these things and people are not God, our actions toward them prove we have it within us the ability to worship.

Please don’t hear me say we shouldn’t cheer for our favorite players and teams or go to concerts. These are merely two very obvious examples. We could create a lengthy list of what gets our worship – our kids, our careers, our closets…. The idea is to become aware that we are good at worship. And that our focus needs to shift if God isn’t the one on the throne after we follow that trail.

If we feel the prick of conviction, we don’t beat ourselves up. We lean in to what Holy Spirit is saying because it’s the only way we’ll make the change. Because God should be the only One on the throne of our hearts and lives – and not just because He’s worthy, but because He’s the only One who can handle our worship.

Holy

God’s number one command tells us to have no other gods but Him (Exodus 20:3). And His second command follows suit – worship no idols (vv.4-6). Here’s where we see how much words matter. Those things we find sitting on the thrones of our lives? They are little ‘g’ gods. They’re idols.

And God instructs us not to worship them because He knows how much they’ll trip us up, how much they’ll divert all our worthy adoration and affection – from Him, the only One who is worthy of such worship. Because He alone is holy. 

Holy. A complex, rich word that describes God. The Hebrew meaning for holy is sacred and set apart – the idea that God is so distinct and unique in His purity that He’s set apart from the common, the typical, the unholy. God, the creative force behind all of creation, is full of beauty and life. He’s utterly unique and good. He’s perfect, pure, and oh so powerful.⁶ 

No one in heaven or on earth, except Jesus Himself, can claim such holiness. Therefore, our Holy God is the only One worthy and deserving of our worship.

Wholly

When we worship God, we don’t want to give Him a portion of our praise or half of our heart or a fraction of our adoration. We want to give God our ALL. 

Consider how Moses described the way we should love God:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”

Deuteronomy 6:5 NIV

There’s nothing partial in any of that – all heart, all soul, all strength. Jesus added: all mind (Matthew 22:37). Eugene Peterson tried to emphasize how completely we are to love God when he paraphrased the Shema:

“Love God, your God, with your whole heart: love him with all that’s in you, love him with all you’ve got!”

Deuteronomy 6:5 MSG

Another way to say this is that we’re to worship God with an undivided heart.⁷ Wholehearted. Wholly.

I am a self-proclaimed a word nerd, and years ago as I was using my parallel Bible – with NIV on the left and The Message on the right – I discovered a little word play in Paul’s letters. Eugene Peterson was, obviously, at a whole other level of nerdy wordiness, and these two words have stuck with me for nearly twenty years: whole and holy.

“…He had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love.” Ephesians 1:4 MSG

“…made whole and holy by God’s Holy Spirit.” Romans 15:16 MSG

“…becoming whole and holy…” 1 Corinthians 7:35 MSG

“May God himself, the God who makes everything holy and whole, make you holy and whole, put you together—spirit, soul, and body—and keep you fit for the coming of our Master, Jesus Christ.”

1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 MSG

There’s an incredible Greek word, xōréō, that captures the idea of making space – in our hearts, our bodies, our lives. And when applied to God, we are given a glimpse of what it takes to live holy and wholly for God – “with an open heart, with available space that embraces the ‘more important.’”⁸ 

But if our minds and hearts and bodies are constantly bombarded by the urgent, we miss the ‘more important’. Peter says to let ourselves “be pulled into a way of life shaped by God’s life, a life energetic and blazing with holiness” (1 Peter 1:15-16 MSG). To be pulled into sounds like an orbit – but we can get pulled into anyone’s orbit. And the only way to break ourselves away is to make space. To embrace God. And then allow ourselves to be pulled into His orbit of holy love.

As we draw closer to God, we can absorb His love and allow it to sanctify our self-interest and redeem our counterfeit faith (1 Timothy 1:5 MSG). We’ll develop a life open to God, and our worship of Him will deepen. Our adoration of Him will pour out of our hearts and bodies before Him.

My friends, we are meant to worship God wholly:

• Our holy God deserves our whole hearts. 
• Our God, who is wholly holy, desires all of our adoration. 
• Our God, who is wholly set apart because He is so holy, longs for us to look up from all that beckons our attention and wholly love Him.

And as we worship Him with all that we are, we enter His holy presence and begin to reflect His holiness to the whole world. 

Father God, we join with all the earth and shout with joy to You! We worship You with gladness, singing with joy! We know that You are the Lord our God – that You made us and we are yours. We are your people, the sheep of your pasture, so we enter your gates with thanksgiving, into your courts with praise. Thank You, God, for being so good! Praise You for your holy name. We are so grateful that your unfailing love continues forever, that your faithfulness continues to each generation. Holy, holy, holy are You, Lord God Almighty! The whole earth is full of your glory! We love You, O Lord our God – with all our hearts and with all our souls and with all our strength. Lord, we know it is You who makes everything holy and whole, so we pray that You would make us holy and whole, putting us together—spirit, soul, and body—and keeping us fit for the coming of our Master, Jesus Christ. We bow before You, the One who has called us because You are completely dependable. If You said it, You will do it! So, we bow with our whole hearts and bodies before the Lamb, who was slain – the only One who is worthy to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise! In His name we pray, amen!
(inspired by Psalm 100; Isaiah 6:3; Deuteronomy 6:5; 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 MSG; Revelation 5:12)

Resources: I love sharing with you the books, podcasts, articles, and anything else that has inspired, encouraged, or taught me. These are humble offerings with no expectations.

• 1 – Welcome to our summer series on worship! Just as we did through the spring, we’ll let one question be our guiding focus – what is worship – for an entire season. May God meet us on the pages of His Word as we dig into varying facets of worship. May the Spirit guide us in our explorations and questions and discoveries. May our Lord Jesus awaken within us true hearts of worship!
• 2 – Here are two passages packed with praise:
  Christ was revealed in a human body
      and vindicated by the Spirit.
  He was seen by angels
      and announced to the nations.
  He was believed in throughout the world
      and taken to heaven in glory. (1 Timothy 3:16 NLT)
  
  Shout with joy to the Lord, all the earth!
      Worship the Lord with gladness.
      Come before him, singing with joy.
  Acknowledge that the Lord is God!
      He made us, and we are his.
      We are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
  Enter his gates with thanksgiving;
      go into his courts with praise.
      Give thanks to him and praise his name.
  For the Lord is good.
      His unfailing love continues forever,
      and his faithfulness continues to each generation. (Psalm 100)
• 3 – There’s a really cool Greek compound word, typically defined as ‘lovely’, that I tapped into for this definition of ‘worthy of our effort’: The Greek word prosphileo, and it is only found in Philippians 4:8. Pros means ‘to extend toward’; phileo means ‘love or affectionate caring’. Together they mean “properly, worthy of personal affection; hence, dearly prized and worth the effort to have and to embrace.” 
• 4 – Quoted from this Desiring God article.
• 5 – Louie Giglio has a great deal of depth about what worship is and isn’t in his little book, The Air I Breathe.^ I’ve especially honed in on pages 11, 12.
• 6 – I’ve pointed you to this Bible Project video on Holiness before – somehow I always need a review of it. I still recommend it. 😉
• 7 – This is how Matt Redman described worship in his book, The Unquenchable Worshipper.^
• 8 – There’s a nifty definition section (“HELPS Word Studies”) on Biblehub that gives this unique and beautiful description of xōréō. 
• You may notice as you worship along with our Embrace Worship Spotify playlist that the vast majority of the songs are pure praise – moving our focus off earth and self and our stuff so we can look to the One who holds it all in His hands. They’re songs that simply yet powerfully praise God for who He is. Some of those songs especially praise Him for His holiness — like Chris Tomlin’s “Holy Forever” that praises God with: “Hear Your people sing holy / To the King of kings, holy / You will always be holy / Holy forever!”
  
  You might have also noticed that I began this playlist with the song that I recently added as the closer of our Embrace Prayer playlist — “Ancient Gates” by Brooke Ligertwood. It’s a song that pulls me into a holy place every time it comes on. I want to sing along. Move my body. Raise my hands. Worship. So I could not consider another song to begin a playlist about worship! It is my prayer that this playlist will usher us into God’s throne room so that we can worship the Holy One, wholly. XOXO
• Each Wednesday I upload a “Teacup” teaching video that carries on the topic here. You can find all the videos on my Facebook Author Page, Instagram, and YouTube.
• Many of you have already found me on Substack! Thank you so much! While you’re on Substack, check out the ministry I’m blessed to be part of, the Devoted Collective. AND…don’t forget if you’d rather listen to these weekly posts, you can now do so on Substack — it’s easy to see and use the audio bar across the top of each post.
• My monthly newsletter, The Abiding Life, goes to email inboxes of those who have subscribed on my website, and I post them on Substack — usually within the first week of the month. My most recent edition can be found there, and you can subscribe for future newsletters on Substack, here.

Rhythms: As my newsletter’s title infers, we seek to develop an abiding life in this space — a place where we can get informed but also be transformed as we learn to abide in God’s presence throughout our days. I like to think that developing rhythms is one way to aid us in our desire to become more Christlike. These next three months we’re focusing on the rhythm of worship (surprise!).

• And we’ll actually do so in a practical way by continuing in the practice of highlighting prayers and praises and powerful words of worship in our Prayer Bibles! A Prayer Bible is an actual book-Bible that we use to mark passages that will aid us in our praying and worshiping. I like to coordinate the color of my highlighting and tabs so that I can find categories easily. So for this series, I’m going for PINK. 😉 This week we’ll begin by highlighting and tabbing Psalm 100 — the verses of which are listed in full above (see #2).
• We’re all called to share the truths about the work of Jesus. One way you can do that is by sharing this site and telling others your own stories of faith experiences. Believe it or not, we worship God each time we share our stories of faith! We use our whole selves to tell about our holy God!!

Featured Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash. “All the Bits and Pieces” photo by Aleksandra Sapozhnikova on Unsplash.
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