Honesty in Worship
What do I mean by honesty in worship? Is there such a thing as being dishonest in worship towards God? How is that possible? Let me start by saying that I am in no way questioning anyone’s integrity in their walk with God. God alone knows that I have my struggles. I fall. I make mistakes. And God in His great mercy brings correction, restoration and forgiveness into my life.
I love worshipping God through song and have sung countless times, “The reason I live, I live is to worship You” but in the last few days, God has been teaching me about honesty in worship; the element of truth that needs to be in our worship. And I am not talking about how nicely we sing our songs in church or how much we mean what we sing. But, being truthful in how we feel in that moment in time. Let me try and explain.
One of the biggest blessings we have received from God is that He made us in His image and likeness. Everything that God is He put into man. We have God’s nature, His character; all His attributes are in us. One of the most important attribute in God is truth. In fact, the bible talks about Him being the Truth (John 14:6). This truth that we find in God and the truth that is God is seen in the way God has expressed Himself to us throughout the scriptures.
God has made all His emotions known to us. His joy when He made man saying, “It is good”. His regret when sin multiplied and He wanted to destroy the world. His vengeance when He brought His people out of Egypt. His compassion when He saw people in need. His love when He sent His Son to us. His anger when He saw business in the temple. His sorrow when He wept over Jerusalem.
He has been very honest and truthful about His feelings. This brings us back to our question. Can we be dishonest in worship? Yes, we can. When we worship we have only told God how good, how marvellous and beautiful He is. We have told Him how grateful and eternally thankful we are for His love, mercy, grace and salvation. We have told Him how we love Him and can’t live without Him and, without the shadow of a doubt, we have been real about it.
But is that all that we really have to express to God? There have been times when we are so down in our spirit, so frustrated, sad and angry that we don’t even feel like worshipping God. But, I can’t recollect ever telling God, “I don’t feel like worshipping You today”. I have never expressed anger over a certain situation to God. And I know most of us don’t do this, because we think or maybe we have been made to believe that God does not like to see this side of us.
The bible is filled with examples of men of God who expressed their heart very honestly before God in worship and it did not displease Him. My personal favourite is when David, angry with some people, said, “Break their teeth O Lord…”! (Psalm 58:6a) We have laughed at this expression but that was the level of honesty in David’s worship towards God.
I realised this during a conversation with my wife, when we disagreed on a certain topic and I just kept quiet without expressing anything. She told me that as much as she wants to hear that I love her, she even wants to know when I disagree with her or when I get upset over something she did or said. Only in doing so will we grow as individuals and a family.
Likewise with our relationship with God. He doesn’t just like to hear praise and words of love and adoration in worship. He wants to hear our frustrations, our anger and everything that we feel in that moment. As much as God likes to hear the good from us, He wants to hear the bad and the ugly as well . Honestly, it is not like He does not know it already!
David took all His emotions to God. Maybe this is one of the reasons God called him a man after His own heart. Let’s be honest when we approach His throne about everything we feel. After all it is our Father whom we worship and He is more than willing to listen. His love does not vary with what we express. In fact, new grace is released over our life to enables us to worship God with all honesty in the most difficult situations of our life.