Worship...

I'm a thinker. It's what I do. I'm always thinking about something. I either over analyze or under analyze and anything in between. In the past few weeks, I've been thinking more in depth when it comes to my faith and what God has shown me (it's quite a bit to be honest, but it's so wonderful to see what He is revealing to me). I feel this closeness that has been absent for a little while, and it's such a wonderful thing to be. I really think this blogging thing is helping me grow because I'm able to see how God is working in my life. The new school year has brought many new things. We have 2 new preachers at the church and they are simply wonderful. I do miss Jason and Stacey being there. (Even though she's my aunt and I get to see her on a pretty regular basis.) I'm in a new apartment by myself (love it!) and we are getting 2 new additions (my uncle and aunt are expecting twins!) to my already wonderful family. God is so wonderful and good. He times things just perfectly. So with all of these things, I am, of course, thinking...as mentioned above.

Over the past couple of days, I've been pondering on what it truly means to worship, and when we worship, are we doing so with our WHOLE heart? Although worship is not ever limited to just singing, and can be in any form and fashion as long as you are glorifying the name of God, the singing part is what I'm going to share tonight.

I'm always thinking about some thing or another, but worship and praise are always on my mind. I was at the Wesley Tuesday night and we sang one of my favorite hymns, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. During the song, I had a friend turn to me and ask me what the line "Here I raise my Ebenezer" meant. I couldn't answer him, and it made us both wonder if anyone else knew what it meant. Another question that arose in the song is the meaning of the word "fetter".

Now, before I elaborate on what either of these actually mean, I want to first make my point. Sometimes I feel as if we sing worship songs just to sing them. We don't actually take the time to take the words in and reflect on their meaning as we are singing them. I'm totally guilty of it, as we all might be at some point in our worship experiences. To me, it is so important to not only truly mean the words we sing, but actually KNOW their meaning, which brings me to the Ebenezer line of Come Thou Fount. Up until last evening, I had no idea what the word meant, though I had thought about what it from time to time. Once I had finished my research that took all of about 10 minutes, much thanks to Google, I found the answer to what I was looking for. Now I'm not going to go into all the detail that this site went into, but I will enlighten my wonderful readers with bits and pieces of what I found. The passage is 1 Samuel and it says this "Samuel took a large stone and placed it between the towns of Mizpah and Jeshanah. He named it Ebenezer—"the stone of help"—for he said, "Up to this point the Lord has helped us!" —1 Samuel 7:12, NLT. The explanation of the Ebenezer stone is that it represents a fresh beginning and it reminded the people of God's help and his everlasting mercy. It reminds them of their faithfulness to God.

Tonight we had our weekly praise band practice. At the end, my friend and I were walking to his car and I mentioned the above to him. He made a good point that the songs that we use in our worship at our church always have meaning. The songs should be engaging. They should be meditated on and thought about. For me, when I'm practicing or when I'm actually leading worship, the songs I sing have to mean something. The words have to be there and I have to focus on them, and if I have no idea of the meaning of specific words, how can I truly worship? I think things like this in songs need to be discussed, as in why this is in there or what it really means in the song. This gives the congregation some insight to why the song was chosen or why it is a worship song.

There's really no huge explanation to the word "fetter", except that it is a physical restraint used to keep prisoners from running away.
"Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee"
The word "fetter" in this context is not necessarily a literal binding, but a spiritual one. Many times we wander away from God, wanting to do things on our own and this line is us saying "Keep me close, because I don't want to wander from You, though I know I will."

I'm signing off for the night. I'm very tired, so much of this entire post might be redundant, and for that I am sorry. Go in peace, worship freely, love each other unconditionally.

LK