Posture of Worship
POSTURE OF WORSHIP
JULY 31, 2014 AUSTINMAXHEIMER 1 COMMENT
I enjoy worship songs whose lyrics lead me to a posture of worship. This is Our God is one of those. At the end of the first verse (and the second, and the bridge) the line, “I will fall at Your feet,” is sang not once, but twice. The first time it sounds like a proclamation, the second more like a surrender. Either way, it provides a physical image of our relationship with God. Of what our posture should be before Him.
At One Life, Extravagant Worship is a core value of our church. It is often described as raising hands and jumping around, which is fine and good because that is another Biblical posture of worship. But I wonder if in our culture, falling at the feet of Jesus—and by so doing declaring that He is Lord and King of our lives—isn’t the most extravagant form of worship.
The ethos we Americans cling to is: I bow to no man, lone ranger, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, me against the world. The thought of giving up your life for someone else to use, turning over power and control, falling at the feet of another person—is not only counter cultural, it is abhorrent.
As well it should be if we merely look horizontally. What man or woman could be worthy of such a posture?
There is only one:
• He who created and sustains the heavens and the earth
• He who existed as God but emptied Himself to be with us
• He who lived in perfect obedience
• He who first fell at the feet of his followers and washed them
• He who knew no sin, but took ours so that we can have right standing before God
• He who died an agonizing death on a cross while we were still betraying him
• He who conquered death through the Resurrection
Only one such as this warrants a posture of absolute surrender. And in the face of one such as this, a posture of absolute surrender is the only appropriate response.
The following line of the song is, “I will worship You here.” I think ‘here’ is typically understood as, “where I am singing, in this place right now”, which is in itself a powerful proclamation. However, it’s even more extravagant when pointing back to the preceding line. I will worship You here, at Your feet. The act of surrendering our lives is in itself worship. But the crazy part is that we are given new life when we do so! We then get to live lives of worship, reconciled to God through the love lived out by our Lord and King.
My prayer for One Life Church over the next season is that we take on a posture of worship in response to who God is and what God has done. That we fall at His feet in absolute surrender and live lives of worship there.