Life is worship.

Several years ago, God placed a burden on my heart to pray for a movement of passionate, intimate worship to spring up in Millersburg. During that time, on my daily morning runs, I would stop and pray in front of houses and buildings around town, asking Him to stir people’s hearts and prepare the way for this to happen.

A year later, a week of 24/7 prayer and worship-stewarded by members of several local churches in Millersburg and the surrounding valley took place, with only a few hours out of the entire 7 days left without coverage. 

Within the months that followed, I and a friend from another church, who also had a burden to see worshipping Jesus become more than a Sunday morning expression, started what we called, the Living Room Worship Project. The goal of LRWP was to schedule worship nights in people’s homes across the valley, with a goal of bringing worship out of churches and into neighborhoods as well as expanding people’s experience with worshipping Jesus in an intimate and personal context. For that year, every month (with the exception of  November) worship was hosted in a the home of someone different in neighborhoods that included Millersburg, Elizabethville and Halifax addresses. That same summer, 4 regional worship nights (not affiliated with LRWP) also sprung up between Millersburg and the surrounding towns. It was incredible and encouraging to see the increase in worship happening before my eyes. 

As I look back on that part of the journey that I have found myself on, I am amazed at how much my perspective and understanding of what I was praying for at that time, has now shifted. At the time, when I was praying for a movement of worship to overtake Millersburg- I quite literally was envisioning people lifting their hands and singing to Jesus as the ultimate fulfillment of that prayer. As beautiful as that vision still is to me, I am beginning to see now that it is only scratching the surface of what the heart of God dreams of when it comes to worship. God dreams of worship that extends far beyond symbolic sacrifice and verbal devotion- even that which is the most sincere of expressions. He dreams of a worship that is living, messy, and costly; the kind of worship that compels one to pick up his own cross and follow, even unto death- not out of obligation but rather out of a love flowing from a heart that is not our own- too deep to measure outside of the boundaries of heaven.  

What does this kind of worship look like? For starters, it looks like being a force of justice and righteousness in the earth (Amos 5:23-24); courageously persevering in mercy & humility (Micah 6:8); defending the oppressed, the fatherless, and the lonely (Isaiah 1:17); Being joyful in hope, patient in affliction, and faithful in prayer (Romans 12:12); and practicing radical love and hospitality- the kind that extends even to those who persecute us (Romans 12:14). 

Wholehearted worship is so much more than a song- it is all-encompassing, soul-rearranging, and life-altering, and it is what we were made for.