How should we worship God?

Today, I was looking for an old sermon of mine and decided I would post it here. I was sharing it with a friend and thought maybe it might speak to other people too. This was a sermon I preached to help us see that the hymns we sing are important. The music should relate to the entire service and not just be sung because it's a favorite.

Psalm 92

Katherine Kehler, with Campus Crusades, gives practical advice on the need to spend the day with the Lord:
Usually our days are filled with the demands of life crying for our attention, ...but today, whether for four, eight or 12 hours, your only priority is to be with your Lord ...to bask in His love, to thank and worship Him, to listen to Him, to intercede for others...to lay your life and activities before Him and let Him give directions. The objective is to spend relaxed uninterrupted time with God, not to go through a format.

From the Psalms we are given great advice.
Psalm 92 What a beautiful thing, GOD, to give thanks, to sing an anthem to you, the High God! To announce your love each daybreak, sing your faithful presence all through the night, accompanied by dulcimer and harp, the full-bodied music of strings. (The Message)

So why is it we come to worship and think we need to sit quietly and listen to a sermon? How are we announcing the beautiful things God has done if we keep quiet. The Psalms tells us that we are to give thanks to sing an anthem to God and yet as Presbyterians we are a little uncomfortable with anything that isn’t quiet and traditional.

We should start off every morning Praising the Lord. The Psalms tell us that but we shouldn’t just begin our day that way, we also need to make sure we have our worship be a time of praise for God. I don’t know about you, but music can change my mood. There are songs that I listen to with the girls that make me feel like a kid again. There are songs that I listen to that just pick up my spirit. There are songs that I listen to that put a smile on my face.

Every Sunday on my way to church, I listen to the same CD. There is a song on the CD that just gets me ready to worship. I have to admit that on more than one occasion I kept hitting the repeat button to listen to the song again and again. It’s a praise song so you may not be familiar with it, but it’s called “Here I am to Worship.” A group at my last church sang it one Sunday right before my sermon. When I got up to preach I had a different spirit inside that I decided to listen every Sunday. The words are:

Light of the world
You stepped down into darkness.
Opened my eyes, let me see.
Beauty that made this heart adore You
Hope of a life spent with You

Here I am to worship,
Here I am to bow down,
Here I am to say that You're my God
You're altogether lovely
All together worthy,
All together wonderful to me

We are here to worship our Lord. We need to proclaim all the wonderful and mighty acts he has done. When I take the time to praise God it refreshes my soul. It reminds me how blessed I am especially when I think that the world is against me. We need to give thanks and be glad for what the Lord has done for us. Yet at times I think we don’t know how to give thanks.

Now I am going to admit something to you all, that many pastors don’t like to admit……I have a hard time remembering scripture. I was never good at memorizing when I was a kid. My mind would go blank when I was asked to recall something. I would try out for plays and would rehearse…..but then when it was show time my mind would be empty. I have a hard time remembering things exactly.

But I can remember music. I learned as a little child a song that I am sure many of you learned. Jesus loves me. The words are simple and yet the message is powerful. The song has been loved by many started out as a poem by Anna Warner in the 1860’s. She was a Sunday School teacher near West Point who wanted to share the Gospel. A few years later her poem was set to music. This simple song is a guide for some many children, and I think adults. It may be simple, but it gives a short theology lesson. Karl Barth was one of the most brilliant and complex intellectuals of the twentieth century. He wrote volume after massive volume on the meaning of life and faith. A reporter once asked Dr. Barth if he could summarize what he had said in all those volumes. Dr. Barth thought for a moment and then said: "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."

So I want to share with you a little information about our next hymn before we sing it. The song, "His Eye is on the Sparrow," was made popular by singer Ethel Waters who loved the song so much that she used its name as the title for her autobiography. It was based on the words of Jesus, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father… So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.” (Matthew 10:29-31)

The words to this song were not inspired by someone who always lived on the sunny side of life. Mrs. Civilla D. Martin (1866-1948) wrote the lyrics in 1905 after she and her husband visited friends by the name of Mr. and Mrs. Doolittle in Elmira, New York. Mrs. Doolittle had been bedridden for nearly twenty years, and her husband was an incurable cripple who had to propel himself to and from his business in a wheel chair. Mrs. Martin noticed that despite their afflictions, the Doolittles lived happy Christian lives, bringing inspiration and comfort to all who knew them. One day while with the Doolittles, Dr. Martin commented to his wife about their bright hopefulness, so they asked them for the secret of it. Mrs. Doolittle’s reply was simple: “His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.” The beauty of this simple expression of boundless faith gripped the hearts and fired the imagination of Dr. Martin and his wife. The hymn “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” was the outcome of that experience - the poem was written that very night and sent the next day to Charles Gabriel who put the words to music.

We have a lot to be thankful for in our lives. Our community may be facing difficulties, but we can thank God. Maybe if we are vocal about our praise and thanksgiving to God, we can be an example like the Doolittles to help others see the blessings God has given them. We may have some hardships. I know the number of homes being foreclosed is increasing. I know there are people looking for where their next meal will be. I know that we have people who don’t know where to turn, but we still can give thanks to God. We must give thanks because we have a Lord who still looks out for us and keeps his eye on us.

So remember to give thanks and praise the Lord. You may not remember which Psalms tells us to give thanks, but that is okay. Just remember to give thanks. It can be in the form of a hymn or a prayer. The Lord doesn’t mind how we give thanks. You can do this at red lights, while you are driving. Use you spare moments to pray for others. You can pray by yourself or with others. Just remember to praise the Lord for the beauty of creation and all that is in it.