Acts Community

We are going to be trying something new in Acts to develop our worship.  Below is an explanation depending on whether you’re a ‘Ready to Eat’, ‘Home Cooked’ or ‘Grow your own’ sort of person.

Ready to eat (“I just want to get on with it!”)

We have put some worship ideas together that we hope will stretch people in their individual worship time and then will facilitate the use of some of those ideas in the following Sunday service. We want to be creative in our worship expression. The links to the resources are below.

Home Cooked (“Tell me briefly!”)

Recently one of the areas that we have really felt God calling us to ‘do better’ is our corporate praise and worship.  We understand that this holds equal importance with all that God is calling us to do in other areas of his church. But when our worship life flows easily, every other area of life seems to flow more easily also. God does not call us to a place where we can adopt an either or position when it comes to living a Christian life, he would have us live “life to the full” and in that we must strive for balance in our lives.

When people visit our Sunday service the praise and worship must reflect how worthy the person we are worshipping is, and that worship is an integral part of every day Christian’s life.  That when we worship God we find most enjoyment in him and he sees most of himself in us.  The weekly resources will hopefully help you  develop your praise and worship life.

Grow your own (“Explain a little more…”)

How someone understands the words that we say is most affected by the things that we do.  If you are a part of Acts, you are contributing consciously or not, to what people understand praise and worship to be – that is quite a responsibility. We need to be modelling relevant and contemporary worship to a community.

To help you understand a little more about praise and worship it may help to take a snapshot of how the Bible sees both those things being demonstrated.

Verses On Praise:

By Him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, this is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name. – Hebrews 13:15

Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts. – 1 Chronicles 16:8-10

Then David said to the whole assembly, “Praise the LORD your God.” So they all praised the LORD, the God of their fathers; they bowed low and fell prostrate before the LORD and the king. 1 Chronicles 29:19-21

The trumpeters and singers joined in unison, as with one voice, to give praise and thanks to the LORD. Accompanied by trumpets, cymbals and other instruments, they raised their voices in praise to the LORD and sang: “He is good; his love endures forever.” Then the temple of the LORD was filled with a cloud. 2 Chronicles: 5:12-14

You can see from these 4 verses how large the scope of what praise really is. We have:

* A sacrifice of praise

* Singing

* Telling of his wonderful acts

* Bowing – being prostrate

* Musical instruments

That is from 4 verses on praise. However praise is mentioned 351 times in the Bible and gives us a lot more ways to praise God. The reason for this is because of our English language. The English language has one word, praise, for 7 Hebrew words – each giving a different definition for praise. They are:

* Hallal: “to laud, boast, rave, to celebrate” – It is used approximately one hundred times in the Old Testament.

* Yadah: “to worship with extended hands, to throw out the hands” – It is used over ninety times in the Old Testament. (Yad means “hand.”)

* Barak: “to bless, to declare God the origin of power for success, prosperity, and fertility” – It is used approximately seventy times in the Old Testament as praise to God.

* Tehillah: “to sing or laud” – It is derived from hallal and is generally accepted to mean “the singing of hallals.” It is used over fifty times in the Old Testament.

* Zamar: “to pluck the strings of an instrument, to praise with song” – It is used almost exclusively in the Psalms and occurs approximately forty times in the Old Testament.

* Todah: “to extend the hands in thanksgiving, a thank-offering” – It is used only a few times when translated “praise” but occurs many other times in connection with thanksgiving.

* Shabach: “to commend, address in a loud tone, to shout” – This is the exclamatory form of praise in a special sense and is found only about seven times in the Old Testament.

You will notice ‘Yadah’ which actually means to worship with extended hands. Does this mean that worship as we know it is actually just a form of praise?

As we continue to discuss the difference between praise and worship lets take a look what the Bible has to say about worship.

Verses On Worship:

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual act of worship. – Romans 12:1

Then the man bowed down and worshiped the LORD. – Genesis 24:25-27

God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” – John 4:23-25

I guess when we are looking at the difference between praise and worship from a worship service perspective that praise seems to be more an outward showing with hands raising, clapping, dancing, bowing and singing. Whereas worship is something much deeper. It is where we are offering our bodies, and ourselves, giving them to God to have his way.

As you can see there are lots of different ways that we can offer praise and worship, I hope that as you go through the weekly resources they will help you develop your relationship with God, and also how you contribute to corporate praise and worship.

Continuing the “eating” theme, having a variety of worship expressions is like having a variety of food. life would be boring if it was porridge every meal.

Resources and activities: week 9