Music is beautiful. It moves you, pushes you, stirs you and draws out emotion that you may not have known was there. Amazing. It can cause the most reserved of people to loose their minds and and move their body in ways, that honestly, they probably shouldn’t. It brings thousands of people together to sing unashamed all while wearing an over priced t-shirt that we bought on the way in to the venue. It connects people. When you look at the person next to you or the person that is at the back of the room there is a connection. People are having an experience together. You will rant about the incredible encore with a random person on the way out of the theater, full well knowing that you will never speak to that person ever again. You might tell your kids someday about the incredible show you saw when you were 20. And, you might even refer to it as a religious experience..

Music does something to people.

Worship is not music. It is something much different. Something much deeper. At least it should be. It has to be.

If ‘music’ moves us, then ‘worship’ ought to change us. Bob Kauflin writes in his book ‘Worship Matters’ that emotion in a song changes us, but that TRUTH in a song changes us eternally. Worship is not music. Music is simply the incredible vehicle that allows us to express what is deep within us. Worship is the expression… not the music. Until we begin to understand this, we will never cross the line of music to worship. We stand the risk of completely missing it and simply enjoying good music.

What if, however, we began to understand it. Imagine what it could be like!

We could walk in to a room knowing that God is there. Let the vehicle of music offer us a way to express our incredible love for our Father. More than that. Something inside of us would change and change eternally as we sing TRUTH. As we sing words like ‘Our God is a God who saves’, ‘Your love never fails’ and ‘if grace is an ocean we’re all sinking’. Music can’t comfort or strengthen you when your child is sick, you’ve just lost your job or you’ve had a death in the family. Worship can. Because it’s not music, it’s truth. Truth is beautiful, comforting, strengthening and lasting. It’s what sustains us. It is what we should be singing and wrapping ourselves around.

May the vehicle of music help us to connect to a living God as well as each other as a community. May it draw us closer to Him and to each other. May we look at each other across the room and feel the connection of moving in a single direction together. May we sing unashamedly. May we tell our children about the amazing encounters we had with God when we were 20…not the music.

John 4:23
“It’s who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That’s the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in theirworship. God is sheer being itself—Spirit. Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration.”