What is Worship?

Worship is often thought of as what happens at a particular time on Sunday morning. While the Church of the Ascension gathers every Sunday to revere and adore the living and Holy God revealed to the world - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - worship is much more.

The heart of worship is honouring and revering God with our lives. The original English word for worship was worthship. We worship that which has supreme place in life, that or whom receives our greatest loyalty and devotion. What we worship is normally the object of our greatest affection. Therefore, what we value to be most important is typically what we love and adore.

Worship is the engagement of one's entire being with the holiness of the only God who is. Worship is a life of conversation. God speaks, we respond, God responds, we respond again. Worship is our response to who God is, who He has revealed Himself to be, as we witness in the work of His created world, in His historical revelation to the people of Israel and ultimately to all peoples and cultures - in the incarnate person of Jesus Christ.

The more we come to understand who God is, the more we desire to open our lives to the change He desires to make in us. Richard Foster wrote, "Worship is our response to the overtures of love from the heart of the Father." That is what St Paul communicated when he wrote, "Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God-this is your act of spiritual worship." (Romans 12:1).

Throughout the Scriptures, God's people are constantly recalling God's acts of salvation. In fact, all of Scripture may be seen as a retelling of how God has reached out to save his lost and self-serving children, and how He desires that they live in Him and with Him through trusting and obedient faith.
When our conscience is brought to life by thoughts of God's holiness, when we grasp a deeper understanding of God, when we grow in compassion for others from knowing God's love for us, when we surrender our desires to the will of God, worship happens.