Zechariah 7:5-6 (ESV)
[5] “Say to all the people of the land and the priests, ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth month and in the seventh, for these seventy years, was it for me that you fasted? [6] And when you eat and when you drink, do you not eat for yourselves and drink for yourselves?

There is so much in this chapter that I am not really ready or capable of addressing yet. The last half of the chapter is particularly relevant to the immigration issues that our country is facing. But it is the first half of the chapter that really caught my attention. I believe that the reason for the issues in the second half is because of the issue addressed in the first half. That is, we have turned worship of God into worship for self.

Worship is about God, but they had turned worship into something about themselves. God asks about their fasts, “Was it for me that you fasted?” (Zech 7:5). The obvious answer is no. They had not fasted for God. They had fasted for themselves. He follows that by saying that when they feasted it was for self-indulgence. The fasting should have been to turn their hearts toward the God. The feasting should have been with hearts of gratitude, recognizing God as the source. They turned it inside out and made their worship about themselves.

We have done the same thing. Worship has become about how I feel as the songs build. Worship becomes about whether I experience something. But worship is about bowing the knee before the Almighty. There is a subtle, but significant difference.

Back around 1980 I was a counselor at a 9th grade camp. One night we had revival. Every kid in camp came forward and there was great emotion. It rippled through the camp and we had a hard time getting the kids back to their cabins for lights-out. It was a genuine move of God that carried a lot of emotion. The next night the kids were trying to reproduce the emotion of the night before. They were disillusioned that they couldn’t attain the same emotion as previously. Genuine worship had become about them.

I fear that we have done the same thing with our Sunday morning worship. Old Timers don’t want to change to new music because it is the old music that makes them feel like it is worship. Younger ones want new, loud, moving music because it helps them “feel” the presence of God. But I’m not sure that at that point either of them are worshipping. Worship is about God. We have made it about us.

Matt Redman’s The Heart of Worship talks about blessing the heart of God. What if blessing the heart of God was the purpose of our worship instead of blessing our hearts? How might that change our worship? What if worship really isn’t about us? How might that change our approach to God? What if it’s not about us at all? What if it is about God?

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