A Life of Worship-Week One:Music

Post Introduction- Our students were asked a few months ago what topics they may be interested in discussing, and worship and music were both topics that were listed.  While traveling for Christmas, my husband and I discussed what direction we could take the topic of worship in that didn't only pertain to music.  Our students are overall very talented musically and obviously already make music an important part of their lives, so we wanted to present worship to them in a new way that could help them to view their lives differently and realize that there is more than one way that we can worship God. Our goals throughout this four week study are to encourage our students to worship God in as many aspects of their life as possible and help them to know and believe that God loves any type of worship that they bring to Him, regardless of how insignificant it may seem to them.

The Lesson
(15-20 mins depending on conversation)

Introduce this week's lesson to your students with these questions:

What do you think of when you hear the word worship?
Do you think that there are other ways to worship?

Most people think of worship as music that we sing together on Sundays and listen to in our cars, but we know that there are other ways to honor God. The definition of the word worship is to show or express feelings of reverence or adoration for a deity/God. This definition tells us that anything that we do that honors God and brings glory to Him could be seen as worship.

Since music is the most commonly thought of form of worship, it will be our starting focus. The bible contains many songs that honor God and many verses that command us to do the same!
(Here are a few that we chose, but feel free to add more or use completely different ones as examples)

Psalm 95:1 "Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the rock of our salvation."

Colossians 3:16 "Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts."

God specifically tells us to cry out to him! Luke 19:40 says that if we won't, the rocks will! I don't know about you, but I think a God who would be praised by even inanimate objects is definitely worthy of being praised, and He knows this and desires it! We should never be so silent that the rocks have a chance to get in a word in, though, because we have so much to praise God for!

We should choose to worship God every day because we are grateful, but worship can have positive outcomes for us, as well! I can think of a few times in the bible that people chose to worship God on their own or at His command and it definitely paid off for them, can you think of any?
(Examples may vary, our group specifically mentioned David, Joshua at the Battle of Jericho, and Judah's victory in 2 Chronicles that was led by musicians praising God)

I think one great example of this is Paul and Silas in the prison. Paul upset the wrong person and he and Silas found themselves in a pretty terrible situation.

Acts 16:22-24  ^"The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten with rods. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. When he received these orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks."

So, Paul and Silas find themselves in pain, uncomfortable, probably in the dark, and in what we can assume were pretty nasty conditions.  It would have been pretty easy to complain to God, but instead they chose to honor Him with worship, even in their despair.

Acts 16: 25-26 "About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose."

The jailer sees what has happened and almost ends himself before Paul stops him.  Even though every prisoner had been physically freed, they all stayed put, much to the amazement of the jailer.  Paul and Silas go on to minister to the jailer and his household and were ultimately freed.
 (The entire story is in Acts 16, we've discussed this a few times for different reasons over the past months so I only included an excerpt and summary in our lesson.)

Worshipping may not break every shackle (physical, mental, emotional) in your life, but singing songs of thanksgiving is a good way to make you forget about your problems and focus instead on all of the amazing things God has done.  It's hard to stay negative and complain when you're focusing on how amazing God is and how grateful you are for the blessings He has placed in your life.

This week, our challenge is to try to worship with music or by crying out the best that you know how. All God expects from us is a joyful noise, so you don't have to be the most amazing singer around to make Him happy, He just wants to hear from you that you love and appreciate Him, and He honestly deserves to hear it.