A quick word on Worship

Christy Dragotta explores the true meaning of worship, differentiating it from praise songs, and shares a 30-day challenge to transform your mindset through Christian music.

#encouragement, #praise, #worship, #onlyoneworthy

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Hey friends, I am so glad that you're here with me today. We are gonna talk about worship. It is one of my favorite subjects, which I know I say so often, but this one is really well, I really like a lot of things, but this one is really one of my top things in all of the world to talk about and to actually do is worship. And so I just wanted to talk today and break it down a little bit for us. One of the scriptures that talks about worship is in Colossians 3.16, and it talks about speaking in songs, hymns, and spiritual songs. And I just always thought that that was so interesting because it on the outset it kind of looks like they're all the same: just songs, hymns, spiritual songs. It all sounds like what we would call worship. But it got me to thinking, you know, there really is a difference in worship music. And I think sometimes we call things worship music that aren't actually worship. And so let me give you an example. When we sing songs that talk about who we are in Christ, those are amazing Christian songs. They are for the edification of the body, they are to build us up, to make us feel good, to remind us, right? We are to always remember what Christ did for us and the beauty of what he did. And so they're wonderful for the body and they are necessary in the body of Christ. And those are good, those are good songs to remember what he's done, but they aren't necessarily worship songs because the person that is being focused on is me. And I really don't want to worship myself. I do it often, right? Idolatry is real, and a lot of times we make ourselves on the throne. We do that a lot for our own comfort and things like that. But for this, when we're talking about worship, I really want to look at what is worship, and worship is honoring God, right? It is giving God all the glory, all the recognition, all of our love, all of our heart. You know, there's a little song my mom used to sing to me, I love you, Lord, and it just says, I love you, Lord, and I lift my voice to worship you. And it's just so good. It's just a it's just telling him, I love you, and I'm gonna use my voice to worship you. And it's there, there's a song, you know, we used to sing it's so simple. These are the simplest songs that we used to sing in church, but it's just you are worthy, and you sing that over and over. You are worthy, you are worthy, you are worthy, you are worthy, and you can do that with a lot of you can do with hallelujah, you can do it with a bunch of different words, but in that you are really just worshiping the Lord, and it's beautiful, it's beautiful to do that. And then over the years I've heard from different worship leaders songs. There's one that says, I don't want to talk about you like you're not in the room, I want to look right at you, I want to sing right to you, and it's just it's talking about I want to worship you, I want to fix my eyes on you. You are the one that is worthy, you are the one that is holy, and so that is worship when we're telling God, you are worthy, you are enough. When we're singing about, you know, um, and these are some of my favorites. I love singing these songs because again, they edify us, they they build us up. But like, where would I be without you? kind of songs. They're wonderful, and it is singing praise, right? It's a spiritual song, it is a praise to the Lord, but it isn't necessarily worship, if that makes sense. So I wanted to break that down, but it's not exactly what I wanted to focus on. You know, when we worship, there's a lot of different ways to worship. Singing is just one of the ways, and I know you've heard this probably in a thousand sermons, but when we honor the Lord, that is worship. That is worship. We are when we do something that is in Christ's character to love on somebody else, that is an act of worship. And there was this time I was, I don't know, I think in my 20s, maybe early 30s, and I was on the worship team at church, and we had been singing, I'd sang every week and loved it so much. I loved to sing harmony, but I was still kind of figuring out harmony, so a lot of times I just sang on the melody. And um, the worship leader I was singing with, we had different, obviously, ranges that we could sing in, and so I was constantly stressing my voice, and then I also carry a lot of tension sometimes in my neck and shoulder area, and so the combination of those two things and not warming up my voice or practicing ahead of time ended up causing nodules to form on my vocal cords. And I didn't realize how serious it was until when I went to the doctor, he was like, if you keep this up and you don't take it easy on your voice, you you're actually going to never be able to sing again. Like you're gonna have to or you're gonna have to have surgery to have the nodules removed, could which could drastically affect your singing voice, and so it that was enough to scare me into what he said. I had to really basically whisper for the next three weeks. And at that time, I had I can't, I think I had three children at that time, and so I was thinking to myself, how can I parent three small children with a whisper? Right? Mommy has to talk quiet, and so it was just crazy that season, but that it was fine, and I did that I think for about three to six weeks. I ended up talking really low and I could not sing. The instruction was you absolutely cannot sing, and so I took him very seriously and I did not sing. But what that caused me to see is in worship, I already lifted my hands when I praise the Lord. A lot of times I will worship with my arms up, and I will just um use my body as a way to express myself and my feelings. But in that time, I realized I couldn't use the one thing that I counted on the most to worship the Lord, and that was my voice. I would be filled, it was so interesting, I was filled with this great emotion of wanting to praise the Lord, of wanting to worship the Lord, and yet I I couldn't utter a sound. And so I found myself frequently just going to my knees with my arms straight in the air, and I just there was no, I just couldn't. There's a song, I think it's Phil Wickham sings it, and he says, I can't bow low enough, I can't lift my hands high enough. That is exactly how I felt. It was like I am so full of gratitude and worship overflowing, and the one way I'm used to telling you, I can't. And so now my body became the symbol of what worship was in my heart, just the overflow of my heart. And I mean, I would just cry, I would just sit and cry with my arms up because there was there was no other way I could express myself. It was such a purposeful season, but the lesson was difficult for me because I really missed being able to sing to the Lord, and it felt like forever, even though it was only three or six weeks long. And my nodules went away and everything was fine. And ever since I've been careful, more careful, to try and warm up my voice a little bit, sing in my range more, or just go to harmony, which thankfully that same worship pastor taught me harmony so that now I can hear it better. And really, my mom and I we used to sing at church, and um, it's actually just some of the most precious memories I have with her, but we would just hold hands even whenever I was kind of grown. We would hold hands and sing at church, and um, she would always sing harmony, and so I heard it, I grew up hearing it all my life, but I just wasn't sure necessarily how to do it. So she really taught me about harmony, but he taught me how to hear and sing the harmony, and so that was it was a beautiful, beautiful thing, but anyway, I digress. So, with worship, there are so many ways, you know. Our posture really can be just a posture of worship. Sometimes that posture is laying flat out on the floor, right? Just praying. Maybe that's travailing, maybe we're just crying out to the Lord, or maybe we're just down on our knees, maybe our face is turned up, or maybe we're on our knees and our face is turned down. You know, our posture can reflect what's going on in our heart. And the beautiful thing is it's never a surprise to God. He knows our hearts, he can read our heart without seeing our posture, but it's so beautiful when our heart and our posture are in alignment. That is worship, it's being honest before the Lord, and even sometimes worship just looks like confessing the truth to God. It's just beautiful. So I wanted to kind of open your mind to the fact that there are different types of songs and singing and spiritual songs. Our life is to be lived as an offering continually to the Lord. I know recently I've just done an episode that says, don't strive, right? And and your righteousness isn't done by your good works, by your right acts, but I really wanted to focus on just the overflow of the goodness of God in our lives. What does it look like to worship? And I think worshiping at home alone by yourself, you just have maybe your favorite radio station playing that plays Christian music, or you put on a mix of your favorite songs on Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever you get your music from. But it's so wonderful to have a list ready to go that just invites you to really sit before the Lord and focus on him. And that doesn't mean you can't have a few songs that are in there that are about what he's done for you or how that's impacted your life, because that does produce a spirit and a heart of worship, but just being able to focus on him and to be quiet, even if you just take five or ten minutes to do that and tell him he is worthy, he is worth it, it really changes your whole attitude and outlook on the day. And I've had days where that comes easy, and I've had days where that's kind of difficult. I've had days where I didn't feel like singing worship songs, I didn't feel like putting myself in a posture like that. I was not in a good mood or I was not having a good day. My circumstances were not making me rejoice, right? But the Bible even tells us, rejoice, say it again, rejoice. And it says, This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Since every day is the day that the Lord has made, it applies to every day, no matter what your circumstance is. And so I think it's just great when we can worship the Lord on the hard days and the easy days. On the hard days, that worship can even just be tears while you listen to a song. And I've had the Lord bring songs to mind. I know I've told you guys this kind of thing before, but if the Lord puts a part of a scripture in your mind, or if a part of a song comes into your heart while you're just walking around doing something, put that music on. It's because the Lord has a message in the song that he wants to put into your heart, he wants you to remember. It's the same thing with scripture. When he puts a scripture into your mind, when you open up the word and you get into that scripture, you're gonna find that he is trying to invite you into something beautiful. I I want to challenge you all, and this is, you know, each week I try to give you a little bit of a challenge. This week's is it could be really difficult, and I don't want to shame all music that isn't Christian music because I listened to tons of music and loved it. Whenever I was growing up, I listened to every genre of music, but I do want you to think about the music that you are putting into your mind, and even if it just has a really good beat, you know, that's a lot of people are like, well, I just like the the beat and the music that's in, I'm gonna call it secular music, more than the beat and the stuff that's in Christian music. And I get that, I understand there are some really great songs with some really great tunes, and we love them and we love to sing them, but what you put in your mind does matter, and so the challenge is for 30 days. I just want you to do this for 30 days. I want you to listen to only Christian music, so it can be whatever your local Christian station is, or like I said, your worship playlist that you make. You can search and find Christian artists that sing in the same style that your favorite artists sing in other genres, right? So just do some research. There are some really talented Christian artists that are in every single genre. You just have to find them and make a playlist and start listening to those songs for the next 30 days. Don't listen to any music that isn't Christian music, okay? And I know if you go out to dinner or whatever they're going to be playing, whatever songs they're playing on the radio. I'm not talking about that. When you're in your private time, when you're driving in the car, when you're sitting around your house listening to the radio, put it on Christian music. And the reason I want you to do that for 30 days is our local radio station did this forever and ever. They called it the 30-day challenge, and they usually do it every January. They ask for the next 30 days, just listen to Christian music. And you know, I did that, I was in my 20s, and I loved it because what I noticed was my mindset changed. And of course, if you're hearing songs from an embittered heart of leaving your husband and you know, your dog dies, and or some of the songs out there these days, the way that they talk about women and women's bodies, and just the words that they use to describe people, it's all so degrading, and it's just not what you want to be putting in your mind. And if you're you're thinking about sex and you're singing about sex, and you're you're singing about lustful things, and you're singing about things that just stir up bitterness, you know, that has to have an impact on you, right? And we used to there, it used to be a really popular saying, but it was garbage in, garbage out. Whatever you put in, you are going to put out. It's just like if you put coffee in a coffee cup and somebody bumps into you, what spills out is going to be coffee. It's not going to be something else, no matter how much you want what's inside to change. So I think it's important to understand the things that you are putting in your mind through music, and especially music. Music is powerful. The lyrics and the beat and the rhythm, it sticks with us. I mean, think of those songs that you just cannot get them out of your head, or a jingle, a clever jingle from an advertisement, right? And so it's important that you watch what you do put in your mind. But I, the challenge is just for 30 days, only put worship music, Christian music, into your mind and see what God does with it. See if it doesn't bring you a bit of peace and relaxation because all those songs are going to point you back to the fact that you serve a big God who loves you. And so that's my challenge this week. I want you to go and find your local Christian music station and put that on your radio and then make up a really good playlist, and it can have all kinds of different artists, but they all need to be singing worship songs. For those of you that maybe don't know a lot of worship music, Lauren Daigle is great. She's what they call a crossover artist, right? She started out in the worship genre, and then her songs quickly spoke to people in that kind of pop rock genre. So it she went over to that as well. Those are great songs to start if you kind of like something with a lot of rhythm and beat. But there's so many, just do, I mean, a quick Google search is gonna take you so many places with worship music and Christian music. It really does change the way that you are thinking about life and it helps equip you to stand up to whatever your circumstances are with more faith. And isn't that what we need? Is an encouragement in our faith. So there you go, 30 days, nothing but worship music and Christian music, and see what it does for you. And if you have a story, okay, so if you did this, if you choose to accept this challenge and you do this for the next 30 days or even the next two weeks, and you notice the changes, I would love for you to write in and tell me about it because it's so fun to talk about things that really make an impact, and I love to hear your stories. And so maybe one of your stories would be featured in the podcast in an episode to come. So thanks for being with me today. I love spending time here talking with you, and I am hopeful that you'll have a beautiful week and really be encouraged by listening to your Christian radio station. Alright, see y'all next week.