The Cost of Discipleship (Part II) - From Worship to Sacrifice

At the end of January, my college hosted a conference of ministry leaders from all over the globe.  This conference is held each year and tends to be the largest and most anticipated event of the school year.  It consists of three days of music, fellowship and information packed seminars that share with everyone how God is moving in the world.  I had seen four conferences in my time at college, but this one felt much different right from the get-go.  The conviction in my heart from my winter’s dark night of the soul still burned in my heart when the speaker began his four part series…

The music had just ended for the opening session and as I sat down, the man began to speak.   

“This, what we are calling worship these days, is very good emotional preparation for self-sacrificing love.”

The words which he uttered carried great meaning, beyond what many members of my culture would understand.  I will attempt to journey through the thoughts which were presented and which changed the way I viewed the world and my own faith.

The Beginning of a Journey

When I began my time at Heritage College & Seminary, my goal was to become a worship pastor.  I loved music and had a passion in my heart to serve God through the gifts that he had given me.  Throughout my time in the Church Music program, I learned a great many things about what worship is and is not.  I discovered that I had many misconceptions of the nature or worship and I also discovered that many (not all) church goers today are as clueless as I was about worship.

In North America, the word worship has almost been reinvented.  People throw the word around when talking about a certain genre of music, or for a time in which we praise God through music.  I do not discount the qualification of these things as worship, but worship is such a deep concept that merely using the word to describe these things teaches people a very oversimplified concept of worship that ends short of what true worship calls us to do.

So what is worship?  We immediately arrive at a problem with the word as we deal with translation issues from the original Hebrew and Greek languages.  The word worship originated from the old English word weorthscipe which, when broken down, means worth/value (woerth) and shape/condition (scipe).  Together it can be defined as acknowledgement or recognition of God’s worth.  This seems to be more congruent with our understanding of what worship is; however, there is a large gap between the old English language and the Hebrew and Greek of the Bible.

To start, there are several words translated into the word worship.  Aboda (Heb.) in the OT typically refer to service associated with work done in the temple.  In the NT, latreia (Grk.) is linked to service or sacrifice, such as the OT allusion that Christians should offer up their lives to God as a sacrifice (Rom 12:1). 

Another set of words is also used: proskyneo and its Hebrew equivalent shachac.  These terms refer to a position of submission (and therefore a recognition) of God’s sovereignty.  Positions such as bending the knee or bowing down are paired with the acknowledgement of God’s sovereignty and are observed as ways of expressing a worship filled heart.

The words show us the ancient cultural understanding of our relationship with God, but how does this affect our view of what worship is in relation to humanity?

Many people have written on the topic of worship and how it operates within the human heart.  Louie Giglio sees worship as “our response…to God for who He is, and what He has done”.  John Piper understands that worship is the end to all things, that the universe was made to display the worth of his glory and that humans were created to reflect it.  Two common elements remain constant in every definition of what worship is: a) worship is something that includes God as He is, and b) we respond or reflect His glory through our words, actions and lives.

Worship is a relational concept that even stems into our understanding of the Trinity.  Harold Best describes the Trinity as the "uniquely Continuous Outpourer who continually pours himself out between the persons of the Godhead in unceasing communication, love, friendship, and joy."  

He continues in his book Unceasing Worship:

“We were created continuously outpouring. Note that I did not say we were created to be continuous outpourers. Nor can I dare imply that we were created to worship. This would suggest that God is an incomplete person whose need for something outside himself (worship) completes his sense of himself. It might not even be safe to say that we were created for worship, because the inference can be drawn that worship is a capacity that can be separated out and eventually relegated to one of several categories of being. I believe it is strategically important, therefore, to say that we were created continuously outpouring—we were created in that condition, at that instant, imago Dei.”

By understanding how we were created, we attain a glimpse of what we should strive to become.  If we understand that worship is constantly coming out of us, we can identify the objects or entities that our worship reflects.  If we worship sex, our lives reflect it.  If we worship money, our lives reflect it.  If we worship God, our lives reflect it.

To Lose One’s Self

What does all of this talk about worship really lead us to?  What is the relevance in our lives?

As we reflect back on the conference and the speaker’s words, we see more of the picture.  Our western understanding of worship is highly emotional and limited to musical worship.  His words are a critique and a challenge.  Why do we go to church each Sunday, raise our hands in “worship” and not follow it up with our lives?  The worship in which we participate on a corporate level should serve as preparation for the rest of our lives.  The time we spend in worship at church prepares us for self-sacrificing love in the world with our lives.  It prepares use to give ourselves up for Christ and the good news which he has left for us to share with the world.

It is, then, the offering up of our lives as sacrifices to God that worship calls us to commit to.  That is the cost of discipleship.  The prophets knew it well, the apostles knew it well, the martyrs knew it well.  What will our response be?

*****

As the speaker continued, he cited the same passage which had been convicting me every since I arrived home from Kazakhstan.  He emphasized a painful passage that continually shows me my selfish and sinful nature.

“For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.” (Mark 8:35)

It was apparent for me that I valued my life as a westerner a considerable amount, even more than I valued the mission of Christ.  The words finally sunk in.  To deny myself was to lose my life for Christ.  Not to specifically go out and die in His name (though that is sometimes where the path ends in this world), but to give up all I know and love so that Christ is the highest desire that I have, that I may lift my cup to that height and have it filled with nothing less than the love and glory of God; not money, not relationships, not any of the many pleasures of the world; that my worship would reflect only Him.

It is a tough call, one that is completely unnatural.  The speaker mentioned that to seek God in the full degree of the task is the most unnatural thing that humans can do.  We will scoff and try to justify our lives.  That is the nature of western culture.  We do not understand these things the same way that believers do in areas of the world with high levels of persecution and oppression.  Sometimes we need to hear a different perspective, from someone who understands what the cost of discipleship is in an intimate fashion.

Though my rational mind screams at me to stop and be reasonable, my heart yearns for a sweeter aroma.  It longs for freedom. 

It places its hope in that which the eye cannot see.