Grant Norsworthy's Blog

Matthew 22:35-40

One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

One of the most popular songs in recent years for corporate worship is “I Could Sing of Your Love Forever”. Congregations all around the world sing it. On a recent trip to Asia, I heard it sung in Thai. I would be surprised to find a church music team that has never played it. It’s pretty likely that you, the reader, know the song and have probably sung it time and time again.

I am personally thankful to Martin Smith and Delirious? for first writing and recording this wonderful song. It’s incredibly effective and powerful. In SONICFLOOd we play it almost every time we perform. I love playing it and singing it. While singing that song, I have often felt a wonderful closeness with God and a very real sense of His love for me. It usually leads to a great ‘moment’ where we in the band stop playing and the congregation takes over – singing passionate praises to God.

But very recently I realized something that, to me, was quite shocking. During those times that I was singing of His love, I was doing something that Jesus never asked me to do! In all the recorded words of Jesus in the Gospels, He never once asks us to sing of His love, or has anything to say about singing songs at all. One of the most practiced things that followers of Jesus love to do, He never asked us to do!

While never teaching us to sing about His love, Jesus very clearly, in many different ways and over and over again instructs us to be His love in the world. He tells us to love one another (John 13:34-35), to love our neighbor (Matt 22:39), even to love our enemies (Matt 5:43) and to show love to “the least of these” (Matt 25:40).

Jesus teaches that, after loving God, loving the people around us is the most important thing. And that everything about honoring God –”all the law and the prophets” – stem from our love for God and others. (Matt 22:40) He also shows us that our love should be unconditional and self-sacrificial. (Matt 15:12-14) All this while saying nothing about singing of God’s love.

It is good to sing songs of praise and to worship God through music – I do it and encourage others to do it as my vocation! And there are many places in the Scriptures that give examples and show the value of singing and playing our worship. And I can imagine the saints truly will sing of God’s love forever in heaven.

But we must be careful. It is much easier to sing about God’s love than to truly be God’s love. It is far too easy to let singing be the most obvious outward expression of our love for God when it is our lavish, selfless and outrageous love for people – even the unlovable – that should define us. It may even be possible that singing about God’s love could be an idol that distracts us from how to actually be God’s love.

Let us check ourselves. Better than that, let’s invite the Holy Spirit to check us. Yes! Let’s sing of God’s love, but let’s allow God’s healing Spirit to flow through the act to draw us to full obedience to be God’s love.

Closing Prayer: “Dear God, Thank you for the gift of music and for allowing me to sing of your love. But please forgive me for being less than completely loving towards You and the people around me. I ask you to show me clearly where I have gone wrong – whom I have offended, what apologies I need to make, whose forgiveness I should seek. Please transform me into a true worshiper, shown not by what I sing, but by how I love. Thank you. Amen”

While in Rwanda recently, we were amazed by many things …  including how far people would walk every day and the sorts of things they could balance on their heads (without help from their hands!) while on the journey. Here are the top 10 things we saw:

10. A sack of sweet potatoes

9. An upright milk bottle

8. A long plank of wood

7. Pile of folded bed sheets

6. A banana tree trunk … which is pretty huge

5. A wheeled suitcase

4. An open and full water tub… no spills!

3. A wooden door

2. A garden hoe…. the center of gravity a long way down the pole

1. Backpack – with shoulder straps hanging beside their ears making the carrier look a bit like an elephant

On the topic of music in the church, I’d like to think I have a background that gives me a voice worth consideration. With over 10 years as a professional ‘Christian musician’ – as bassist for the Paul Colman Trio (pc3), ‘worship rockers’ Sonicflood and many others – I now find myself not only singing, but also speaking to crowds about worship – what it is and what it isn’t. With music the thing that has earned me the platform to speak, it might seem strange to many that I now, metaphorically at least, am taking the axe to the notion of music in the church being ‘worship’.

Firstly, and sincerely, I want to apologize. I think it’s people like me, musicians within the church, who have helped to create a great deal of confusion not only about the word ‘worship’ – but also about what it actually means to be a worshiper. This apology comes from a very real and personal conviction, yet, at the same time, I am trying to make a point for all of us with this apology.

In the past I (and other musicians like me) have misused the word ‘worship’ as a synonym for music, in particular music intended for congregational singing by Christians – the songs we sing to and about God. More often than not we’ve used ‘worship’ as an adjective: ‘worship song’, ‘worship band’, ‘worship service’, ‘worship leader’, ‘worship pastor’, ‘worship experience’, ‘worship CD’, ‘worship centre’, ‘worship iPod playlist’, and so on.

But the word ‘worship’ is never used in the Bible as an adjective – to describe, define, categorize or reduce something else. Nor is it used to mean exclusively music or the singing of songs. To use the word ‘worship’ as an adjective is to atrociously reduce and change its meaning. I believe that the word ‘worship’ is most powerful and potent when it is treated as a verb – a doing word. It’s something I must do. Worship requires action, involvement, movement, engagement. It’s a process to be undertaken.

‘But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship Him.’
John 4:23

‘Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s great mercy, offer yourselves as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, and let that be your spiritual act of worship.’
Romans 12:1

I’m sure that many readers of this blog may be familiar with verses from scripture like John 4:23 and Romans 12:1. As we read these words, few of us would believe that the word ‘worship’ is used here to mean singing songs or a meeting of Christians – what happens between 10 and 12 on Sunday mornings. The tug of truth assures us that our Lord Jesus and the Apostle Paul are referring to something much larger, more mysterious, more wonderful, and all pervading. Furthermore, I’m quite sure that most churchgoers, upon deeper reflection, would know that true worship is more than singing songs about God.

Yet we continue to misuse and overuse the word. We might say ‘I didn’t like worship this morning’ when we really mean, ‘The guitar was too loud’ or, ‘I didn’t like the song choice’. We hear, ‘I got to church late and I missed worship’ or, ‘I’m going to find a different church where I like the worship more’. All of these statements mis-educate both speaker and hearer, as they suggest that worship is the experience of singing or playing church music, an idea that leads us away from grasping what worship truly is.

‘I could sing of your love forever!’
Martin Smith of Delirious?,
pc3,
Sonicflood,
And almost every church band and congregation everywhere.

Nowhere in the recorded words of Jesus is there a command to sing songs about His love; instead, over and over again, He asks us to be His love. Worship is not singing songs about God’s love. To worship is to live selflessly, laying down my life – my worldly desires – and to love others the way Jesus does: demonstrated in His dying on the cross. More than a ‘life-style’, true worship is a living death–style.

‘If anyone would call themselves my disciple [or a worshiper] he must turn away from his selfishness, pick up a cross and follow.’
Matthew 16:24

‘Pure and perfect worship in the sight of God is to care for orphans and widows and to remain uncorrupted by the world.’
James 1:27

Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not against music in the church. I think we should sing and play songs that express to God our praise, love, hopes, hurts, faith, gratitude, and everything that’s in us. There are many places in scripture that convince me that this is an important and wonderful thing to do. As a musician, I am extremely grateful for that. Through personal experience I am convinced of the wonderful and mysterious power of music to melt my heart and direct my thoughts and praises to God – to somehow open a portal through which God chooses to move and touch me in ways that I cannot fully explain. Let’s keep singing! Absolutely! Let’s sing more often, for longer, more passionately than ever before! But let’s do so understanding that our church music, in and of itself, is not worship.

Words are powerful. Words – the way we use them – change the way we think. The way we think changes the way we live. The word ‘worship’, in particular, is precious and sacred in its original, Biblical meaning – meaning that is fundamental to faith in Jesus the Christ.

‘If anyone would consider himself a worshiper, and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his worship is worthless.’
James 1:26

By our constant, and (in many cases) knowing misuse, we are allowing the word ‘worship’ to change in meaning entirely. This is not an issue of semantics; it is an indicator of a far greater crisis in our faith. When we no longer have in our vocabulary a word that carries the true meaning of worship, we will not be able to talk about worship, we will not be able to think about worship, and we will not be able to lay down our lives in worship.

As wonderful as music is – a potentially powerful means to express worship – my life surrendered in worship is what is required. God doesn’t want my songs of praise, my musical expressions of worship, unless He also has me, surrendered as a living sacrifice to be His love to my friends, my neighbors, my enemies and, especially, the ‘least of these’ to the ends of the earth.

[Although originally from Australia, Grant Norsworthy lives with his wife, Brooke, and son, Max, in Nashville, TN, USA, and works as a musician, leader of congregational singing for church groups, and public speaker. His speaking engagements include seminars and workshops for church musicians. His work takes him all over the USA, as well as to Canada, New Zealand and Australia.]

For more information, go to www.grantnorsworthy.com

I have been to Rwanda.

I have stood before the tombs of over a quarter a million dead.

I have wept at the grave of a nation of unparalleled beauty and suffering.

Been afflicted by her great faith.

Cajoled by her smiles.

I have listened to the story of a woman spared, with her three children, from mutilation and murder by the pleading of her seven-year-old son to the leader of a genocidal militia gang. She has dedicated the remainder of her life to deliver children from their torturous memories and trauma.

I have sat and talked with an old man in a crumbling mud hut – his home since birth – and heard him say that he is no longer concerned by death because he knows that his granddaughter will not be alone when he’s gone. She is loved

I have walked hand-in-hand with a twelve-year-old orphan girl who knows that soon she will be without her aging grandfather and soul caregiver. She has hope for the future and knows that Jesus loves her.

I have been held by a woman whose unfaithful husband, before he died, gave her the same virus that took his life. She praises God for each new day she is given to care for her four children and the extra four she has taken into her home and heart.

I have danced with a child whose shining face proclaims a peace and joy well beyond my own. She declares that she loves me and will pray for me.

I have been taught by a man who showed respect by never looking into my eyes. “Pray faithfully and without ceasing!”

I have conversed with a teenaged boy who would rather share his excitement to preach Jesus everywhere than take part in a soccer match with his friends.

I have been invited into the home of six orphaned children and their new ‘mama’ – a woman of indescribable grace and beauty and a healing victim of equally indescribable abuse. They make no mention of the material assistance they have been given, but are humbly and eternally grateful for family and community.

I have shared a drink with a new brother. His life has taught him that greater faith in God grows in the garden of suffering.

I have sung with two hundred clean brown faces with shiny white smiles and closely cropped hair. They have gifted me with more than I could ever give to them.

I have hobbled through a new nation: born out of chaos and blood and death into hope and forgiveness, into love (even for an enemy), into an understanding of what it means to ‘turn the other cheek’, of being ‘like the birds of the air and the lilies of the field’, that ‘a kernel of wheat must first fall to the ground and die.’

I have been shown that the call to new life in Jesus is also an invitation to share in His suffering and death.

I have fallen in love with a hopeful, gracious and generous people that have gladly shared the pieces of God that only they have carried in their chests.

Thank you Rwanda.

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