Why Corporate Worship?
We worship God in everything we do. Romans 12 says, “Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering” (The Message).
Still, there is something undeniably special when we offer our songs together to God in worship. The verb “to sing” is used over 60 times throughout scripture. The Bible not only prescribes singing, but we read that song is often a compulsory response to coming into contact with the life-changing presence of God. But why songs and why sing when we gather?
If you are anything like me, the majority of your time and mental energy is spent obsessing over one thing: self. We are consumed by self interest. At the core of our human nature lies an idolatry issue. Worship reorients the posture of our hearts. As we sing songs of praise and worship, we are taking our eyes off of our ourselves and fixing them back on God where they should be. With every line, we are rewiring our self-centered nature and reinstating God back on the throne of our lives. As we fix our eyes on God long enough, we then realize that His eyes are fixed upon us. His presence is with us in every areas of our lives. When we focus on Him, we are transformed by His presence and become more like Him.
The Psalms exhort us to sing a new song. Studies show that it takes us hearing something 7 times before we internalize and understand. Likewise, by the time we sing a song 21 times, we no longer think about what we are singing. If worship is our corporate tool of rooting out idolatry in our lives, we must sing a new song. That’s one of the reasons we write original songs at National Community Church.
Over the next several months, our worship leaders and songwriters will use this space to share the stories and purposes behind songs from our upcoming album, The Jesus Way. We wrote these songs to help us all center our lives on Jesus and become more like him. We pray these songs represent opportunities to pause and refocus on God, so that as we worship through the songs, we are empowered to worship Him with our lives. We invite you to join us on that journey.
