October 2015: A Word from Pastor Sun Hee

The Heart of Worship

 I love the song called, “The Heart of Worship” by Matt Redman. 

 “When the music fades and all is stripped away and I simply come…

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, it’s all about You, Jesus.
I’m sorry, Lord, for the thing I’ve made it
when it’s all about You, it’s all about You, Jesus.”

It reminds me of the purpose of worship and the importance of my attitude of bringing all that I am—my heart, mind, and focus – to worship.

Recently, I read an interview of Rick Muchow, worship leader at Saddleback Church (known for Purpose-Driven Life pastor Rick Warren) where he talks about what is worship and what isn’t.

He said that Worship is “Any expression of our love to God—for who He is, for what He’s said, and for what He’s doing. The Bible says, ‘So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God’ (1 Cor. 10:31). Worship is a physical expression of our spiritual relationship with Him.”

I love that clarity in definition. It’s not just music, ritual, nor what happens on Sunday morning only. It’s much bigger and wider than that. In fact, Jesus exemplified many ways of worshiping-through obedience, teaching, reading and quoting Scripture, prayer, fasting, and giving. It’s anything and everything that we do to show our love to God and the focus of that love is toward God. This is why I think it is important to know what worship isn’t and we also need to watch out not to worship in wrong ways. This is Rick’s answer to ‘Is there a wrong way to worship?’ He said,

“Focusing on yourself. There’s a difference between ‘service’ and ‘serve us.’ A lot of people go to church for what they’re going to get out of it. But it’s not about us. Though we benefit from worshiping God, that’s not why we should do it. You don’t love your kids for what you can get out of it. You love them because you love them.”

Yes, indeed. As the song, “Heart of Worship” reminds us, “it’s all about you, Jesus.”

As you might already know, many people are involved in making our Sunday worship run as smoothly as possible, and they have been working diligently to make improvements to our worship—skills, technology, presentations and more. I know they don’t want to draw the attention to themselves but to Jesus. As a pastor, I am thankful for their faithful ‘expression’ of their love to God each Sunday. With gratitude, my hope is for all of us to pray for those who are working hard in the backgrounds, encourage their efforts to serve, and most importantly, bring the ‘Heart of worship’, so that our lives would reflect His love and through our lives, God will be glorified.

Coming back to the heart of worship,

Pastor Sun Hee