So, Exactly What IS Worship??

So, recently someone asked me to write a 500 word essay describing what worship is and how to flesh it out.

Easy, right?

Yeah, I thought so too.

Ehhhhnotsomuch.

The topic wasn't the hard part. It was the 500 word part.

I mean, worship is so much more than ANY of us can EVER hope to confine within a literary work.

SO! I asked Abba to help me write this thing, mainly because if He doesn't help, it stinks.

Haha.

Don't judge. It's true, lol.

Anywho, I had a revelation in the midst of this essay and I wanted to share it with you.

So here is the 536 word essay...hey, I tried to keep it at 500...

Enjoy. :)

"That moment. You know what I'm talking about. That epic moment when imagination meets reality and it exceeds everything you thought it could possibly be. That moment when your soul is moved so deeply that all you can do is close your eyes and soak in that moment, relish the moment, love the moment, because to do anything else would seem...a travesty. In that moment...you worship. The best example I can think of is when I stood in the solitary valley of an Alaskan mountain range for the very first time. I had seen pictures and knew it was a beautiful place. I had even heard people talk about how breathtaking it was, and I was convinced! I believed them! But I had never seen it, experienced it for myself. There I stood, in the presence of pure, unadulterated, unfiltered, untouched, uninhabited majesty and I was...breathless. Even though I had heard stories of this, it could never do justice to the reality. My imagination had done such an injustice to this moment that, when the reality met my imagination, all I could do was weep...Completely overtaken with awe and wonder...And my first response, the automatic, knee-jerk response was adoration and reverence...in other words, worship. No one had to tell me to be in awe. No one had to tell me to respond. Why? Because it's what we are wired to do. Naturally.  

Some of us, like me and my Alaskan mountains, have seen beautiful worship and worshipers.  Some of us have even been told how breathtaking worship can be, but it's not until we actually step into that valley for ourselves and open our eyes to all that it can be, that we actually experience the wonder of who God is and who we are not, and who we ARE...and our automatic, knee-jerk response is worship. We do it naturally. Not because someone sings a certain song. Not because someone says, "Raise your hands and worship!", but because we, ourselves have willingly stepped into the pure, unadulterated, unfiltered, untouched, uninhibited presence of a mighty God and our imagination meets reality. It's in that moment that we realize how very much more He is than we ever could've imagined and we are undone. 

I've often gone back to that moment in Alaska. I wondered why it moved me so much and then I realized that those glorious mountains were doing exactly what they were made to do! The bible says that the "mountains will burst into song before you" and "burst into singing, you mountains, you forests and all your trees," and, even though it was silent, those mountains were singing. They were singing and, because they were settled in their purpose, it caused my purpose to rise up, too. It caused this feeling of intense love and adoration to rise up. It caused me to worship. When we realize who we are, when we discover our purpose and begin to settle into it, that's the purest form of worship! Being who you were created to be is worship! And it will cause others' purposes to rise up, too. It will compel others to worship, too! Come! Let's worship together!"