What is worship?

When I was a newspaper reporter, we used to have this kind of unofficial contest among the news office.  As we would write stories and captions for stories, we’d always try to come up with a new vocabulary word to use in the paper.

It sort of became this one-upmanship amongst us.  Yeah, it was kind of nerdy, but we were all writers, so this was the equivalent of playing horse in basketball.

Every week, someone would try a new word in a story in attempt to gain this weekly crown. 

One week, one of our writers used the word CADRE.  She wrote that a cadre of police officers gathered on the scene.

The editor didn’t want her to use the word.  She didn’t think it fit.  So the writer defined the word. 

CADRE:  An elite or elect group that forms the core of an organization and is capable of training new members.

A cadre of police officers certainly fit the definition.  The word ended up in the story and never got dethroned as the best word used in a story.

I share this story to illustrate the importance of defining a word.  In order to use a word, we need to know what it means.

Worship is one of those words.  We get it confused all the time.  We think of worship as music, but it's so much more.  Worship is offering up our total devotion to something or someone.  We worship what our hearts long for.

In Mark 9, James, John and Peter go up on a mountain.  Before their very eyes, Jesus transforms.  They no longer see the earthly Jesus who walks among them, but they witness Jesus in all his divine glory.  They got a glimpse of what believers will see one day in heaven.  That glimpse created a longing to be with Jesus.

We call that worship.

So what do you worship?  Is it money or cars or fame or Jesus?  Only one of those thing is worthy of our worship.  Only one will satisfy.