This happens to me ALL the time……
I have shared with many people that the thing Christians call ‘worship’ is a struggle for me. Its not that worshipping God is a struggle, just that doing so as a result of, or as influenced by a formulated and rather repetitive song is tough for me. We should all know that ‘worship’ is not exclusively a musical thing but i find myself wondering if many of us do know that. But this post isn’t about that particular issue…..
Anyway, music stirs up ‘unexpected moments of worship’ within me, music by ‘secular artists!’
This post is inspired by an article in Relevant magazine – you can read the full article here – you should. Reading it helped me gather my thoughts on this subject and pushed me to blog this. I say ‘pushed’ because for some people, this is controversial or risky ground.
A couple of weeks ago i mentioned a need to pause and NOT sing during Church and to assess in my own heart if i was singing the words truthfully. As the Relevant article points out; ‘So many songs seem to address lots of the bright and shiny emotions we feel about God, but sometimes, we can be left feeling detached when trying to worship.’
I don’t want to just re-blog everything the article says so i’ll just say that for a long time i have experienced more ‘unexpected moments of worship’ than i could possibly count. So much so that id say they are no longer ‘unexpected.’ Moments of ‘worship’ during singing in Church are slightly more unexpected if i am honest!
There are many examples in the U2 back catalogue. Seriously, have you ever heard a song of ‘worship’ as amazing as Yahweh? Crumbs from Your Table? I am only thinking of one album with these two suggestions, i could quote U2 for days on end!
A more recent example for me is Josh Ritter’s album So Runs the World Away, it provides a few amazing moments – in the song ‘Lark’ he sings;
“I am assured, yes I am assured yes
I am assured that peace will come to me
A peace that can yes surpass the speed yes
Of my understanding and my need”
I could rattle on here and quote song lyrics all day but my point really is that we can & do limit our worship experience by assuming God only shows up in the words of songs written by Christians who are in the ‘Christian music industry.’
Much of the music i hear within the ‘Christian genre’ is really bad. Outside of the confines of that industry, the music is better – it just IS – but also, the so-called ‘secular has more chance of inspiring ‘worship’ in me. Perhaps thats due to the honesty of the artists? Perhaps because they are spilling out the emotions of their heart into a song and not trying to create the new worship hit song?
God just does NOT define and categorise things like we do & an industry that is boxed in and confined to ‘Christians’ only making Christian music might just be very silly sounding to God – He works outside of all the rules we make!
