What is Worship?

Worship includes what happens in church on Sunday; so it's singing hymns and praying. But it's much, much more than that.

Jesus taught us to "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind" (Luke 10:27 NIV).

That goes well beyond turning up for an hour every week. Worship is our right response to an understanding of what Jesus did for us by dying on the cross, and what God the Father did by raising him from the dead. We believe that's so amazing, so wonderful it demands we respond in love for God every hour of every day in the way we live our lives - seeking His presence, honouring Him, doing His will.

Is this all a bit too radical - simply an over enthusiastic evangelical interpretation of worship? Well, when God chose Moses to be part of His plan to rescue the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, He told Moses to go to Pharaoh and tell him "This is what the LORD says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me." (Exodus 8:1 NIV). The word translated in the NIV as worship can also be translated work or serve. God wasn't setting them free to follow their own ways but to serve Him - to worship Him.