Spirit and...Flattery?
As a worship leader of almost seven years, worship is something I think about quite a lot. Whether it be planning sets, practicing with a team, or writing (well, usually more like thinking about writing), I constantly find myself asking, “what is worship? why do we worship? why does it look like this particular expression?”
A couple months ago, as I was prepping for a ministry trip to the Navajo reservation in Arizona, God revealed something about worship that I’d not yet realized. It’s this: perhaps one of the purest forms of worship unto the Lord is our honesty. Let me elaborate.
It is not uncommon to hear worship leaders encourage the congregation to leave their burdens at the door and come in to worship God freely. Because, and I wouldn’t disagree, worship is about giving God glory that belongs to Him. However, does that necessitate leaving our burdens, questions, and mess at the door in order to worship? I would argue that in order to fully worship God, we must actually bring our whole selves before Him—the joys, triumphs, questions, mess, and burdens included.
The danger of this compartmentalization can be found played out in the book of Job. In short, Job’s friends assume that his suffering is a result of hidden sin, though Job vehemently disagrees and insists that he has not sinned against God. His friends continue to encourage Job to confess his “sins” anyway in order to appease God and thus end his suffering. Ultimately, they encourage him to flatter God by denying the truth of the situation and tell Him what they assume He wants to hear so that Job has a desirable outcome. Remember God’s response? He rebuked the three friends and only spared their lives after Job prayed for them (Job 42).
Jesus’ famous interaction in John 4 with the woman at the well includes an important teaching on worship that also speaks to this. He explains that the Father is searching for worshippers who worship in “Spirit and in Truth”. Note: not “Spirit and Flattery”.
Could it be that when we check our pain at the door, we actually flatter God by telling Him what we think He wants to hear by denying the reality of our human experience?
But what if we dismissed flattery and gave our mess, our pain, and our questions a seat at the table?
Being honest with the Lord is our confession that He is God and we are not. Honesty—the naked truth of our present reality—is worship because it is offering our whole selves, in all our humanity, to Him. And the best part: He can handle our unfiltered, unadulterated honesty. As Melissa Helser puts it, “our humanity isn’t the barrier; it is the meeting place”. He will meet you there.
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I’d like to say that I am a pro at being honest with God. Truthfully, I’m still learning how to come to Him first—before filtering or tidying up. For most of my life, I believed that God couldn’t handle my “bad”, so I thought I was tasked with fixing myself before coming to Him. I didn’t know He is a good Father whose desire is to bless and bear our burdens.
Though there’s a lot of un-learning that still needs to happen, the good news is that I don’t have to do this alone. He is leading the process of learning to bring my whole self to Him. The pressure is off!
My hope is that you feel permission to do the same. To be courageous and lean into vulnerability and honesty with the Lord and see that as a sweet act of worship and surrender. To embrace the pain and the joy and see God in the midst of it all.
XO Margot