“I'll tell you what it really means to
worship the LORD. Remove the chains of prisoners who are chained unjustly. Free
those who are abused!” Isaiah 58:6 (CEV)
I grew up in a church where life revolved around
the Sabbath day. It began on Friday – cleaning and cooking and polishing shoes.
My mom would get all five of us bathed and ready for Sabbath before sundown.
Then we would go to church at 7:00 for JMV meeting – Junior Missionary Volunteers.
We didn’t dress up, we went in our pajamas. My mom and other moms would come in
their robes with curlers in their hair – Honest!
The meeting was led by the pastor or youth leader,
starting with singing songs from Gospel Melodies – that was called “song
service”. Then followed “Opening Prayer”, and “Opening Song” or “Special
Music”. A guest speaker would preach or we would watch a movie about
missionaries. Finally came the “Closing Song” and “Closing Prayer”. The leader
would bid everyone farewell and the kids in pj’s and the moms in curlers and
the dads would head out the back door of the church, only to come back and do
it all over again the next morning – in Sabbath School and “Divine” Service. It
was all so neatly arranged and routinely executed. And mostly free of emotion!
So many
of my childhood memories revolve around church and Sabbath. I remember the
songs and the order of service and the times when we had “Communion”. I
remember the adults talking about who was getting divorced or who was wearing
jewelry or who the next pastor would be after Elder Hoffman left. I can’t
really remember the sermons, or remember that we did a lot of “liberating”. It
was mostly about prophecy and rules and what not to eat or what not to wear.
But there wasn’t much feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless and
breaking the chains of addictions – there wasn’t much of Isaiah’s “liberation”
worship going on at 10th and Locust on Saturday morning.
Not
until high school did I get a taste of that kind of worship. It was on a
Saturday night at a youth meeting where a group of ex-addicts from “Teen
Challenge” came to share how God had saved them from death through the power of
the gospel and the ministry of caring Christians. A year later a group of us
started going to CYA prison in Chino on Sunday Night to conduct worship
services and Bible Studies for the inmates. It was in those and many
experiences since that I realized how the “day” of worship – the routine and
the ritual – could get in the way of actually worshiping by sharing in the
ministry of Christ.
And
now? I am challenged to worship God – not just on the Sabbath day in songs and
prayers and sermons, but every day by
carrying His great heart of love to those who need the freedom of His grace.
T.B.
Think about it: Do you allow your “day” of church to get in
the way of a life of worshiping God that partners with Him in ministry?
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