Ronnie Burgess: What Worship Means to Me

When Jeff asked me recently to write a guest post on this subject, I thought it would be a great opportunity. Then it occurred to me that I’d never really thought about it before.

So here goes…

Like many people, I sometimes think of worship as singing to and praising God. A physical or verbal expression that primarily occurs for 15-30 minutes during a church service—and occasionally—in a personal quiet time.

But I’ve begun to think about the difference between “praise” and “worship.” I define praise as proclaiming the greatness of our God. As an example, check out these lyrics from Chris Tomlin’s song Indescribable

Indescribable, uncontainable,
You placed the stars in the sky and You know them by name.
You are amazing God
All powerful, untamable,

So if worship is something different than praise, what exactly is worship? The answer is in the next line of the song:

Awestruck we fall to our knees as we humbly proclaim,
You are amazing God

Chris Tomlin is talking about a physical act of submission. When we fall to our knees, we are expressing our surrender to God’s Sovereign Will.

So I guess that this is my answer – surrendering to God is what worship means to me.

It’s relatively easy to worship God in a church service when you’re surrounded by other people singing and raising their hands; or when you’re kneeling at an altar taking communion and praying. A bit more difficult is when we worship God with our tithes and offerings, and we surrender control of our finances to him.

However I believe that what God really wants out of us is for us to be focused on him every waking moment. He wants us to surrender every area of our life to him. He desires that we continue to honor him when we’re away from church.

God showed me recently that I had never surrendered my job and my career over to him. For years, I had been trying to get by on my own intellect and talent. I had been struggling with an issue for months and months, and just couldn’t seem to lick it. God told me to quit trying so hard, and to let him take care of it for me.

So I surrendered my career to God. And He took care of the issue, literally within a few hours.

Now, He’s showing me how to worship him through my job as a purchasing specialist at an aircraft manufacturer. I don’t understand it all yet, but God has shown me that it begins with surrender.

"Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am.” – Jesus in Matthew 16:24 [The Message]

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Ronnie is a blogger/musician/worshipper from Wichita, Kansas.  He plays acoustic and electric mandolin in the worship band at GracePoint Community Church when he isn't mixing sound. His favorite verse is Psalm 150:5 in The Message – Praise him with cymbals and a big bass drum, praise him with fiddles and mandolin.

Make sure you check out his blog, From the Mind of MandoRon.

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