Has anyone else found it hard worshiping on the couch the past couple of months? I know I have.

The most difficult thing for me hasn’t actually been the change itself from ‘normal’ church services. It’s been what the change has exposed about my own heart.

I’ve been involved in churches for a long time and I thought I understood that worship is about God.

But take the physical gathering away, strip it all back to singing on the couch, and I’m starting to see that perhaps I’d made worship more about me.

The discomfort I experience sitting on the couch, finding it difficult and awkward to truly bring an offering of worship to Jesus, signals to me that something in my heart posture has been out of whack.

Now, I understand we were never designed for the disembodied experiences that our current online spaces curate. And I understand that worship is about more than singing – it is our whole lives offered to God. So of course engaging in a church service online will be dissatisfying to some degree.

But even still, the discomfort makes me ask some confronting questions, ones I have also heard in others’ experiences.

Have I fallen into the very thing I want to avoid: relying on someone on a stage to “worship for me” and forgetting how to bring an offering of worship to Jesus from my own heart? Have I acted as if passively sitting in a church service is the same thing as worshiping when all I am really doing is consuming a church service and feeding off someone else’s worship?

I am convinced that if we pay attention during this time we will discover who we are really worshiping.

The litmus test is this: if we are worshiping God, if our lives are about God, we will actively and consciously offer him the thing he most longs for. Our hearts.

Our hearts are what he has wanted all along. He longs for a real and authentic relationship with us – the real us that sits beneath the shiny Sunday facade we too easily bring to worship. The gospel is about how God has pursued our broken hearts and transformed them so they can be in loving relationship with him and find their place worshiping him.

I find the story behind the song ‘The Heart of Worship’ so helpful in making sense of this experience.

Years ago, Soul Survivor Watford, a church of young people in the UK, felt convicted that they had become consumers, rather than producers, of worship.

So they stripped the band and the sound system out of their church services for a season and simply brought their unadorned voices – and hearts – to God. At first it was uncomfortable with no props to help them “get something out of” the experience – perhaps like some of us are experiencing on our couches.

But over time, as they persevered, the exposure and lack of adornment enabled them to reclaim what it is to actively and personally bring an offering of worship to Jesus. And in the process, he re-oriented their hearts, lives and church around him.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to move out of this stripped-back season without leaning into what the discomfort reveals about who I am really worshiping; who my life is really about. I don’t want to move forward before waking my heart and learning again to bring my own offering of worship to Jesus, reorienting my heart and my life around him.

I know that a posture of worship is where my heart finds the wholeness and love it craves, and where Jesus gets the honour and glory he is due.

So I want to actively bring God what he has always longed for: my heart.

Perhaps you might like to join me by playing the song below and allowing your heart to bring its own offering of worship to Jesus once again.

The Heart of Worship by Matt Redman

When the music fades
All is stripped away
And I simply come
Longing just to bring
Something that’s of worth
That will bless Your heart

I’ll bring You more than a song, for a song in itself
Is not what You have required
You search much deeper within through the way things appear
You’re looking into my heart

I’m coming back to the heart of worship
And it’s all about You, all about You, Jesus
I’m sorry, Lord, for the thing I’ve made it
When it’s all about You, all about You, Jesus

King of endless worth
No one could express how much You deserve
Though I’m weak and poor
All I have is Yours, every single breath

I’ll bring You more than a song, for a song in itself
Is not what You have required
You search much deeper within through the way things appear
You’re looking into my heart

I’m coming back to the heart of worship
And it’s all about You, all about You, Jesus
I’m sorry, Lord, for the thing I’ve made it
When it’s all about You, all about You, Jesus

Share on Facebook

Tweet