Here I Am To Worship …

In the last month or so I’ve attended church at an orphanage in India, at my home church in Georgia, at a megachurch through live streaming and at a bi-lingual Episcopal church in Fort Lauderdale, FL. 
 
The services ranged from a one-hour tightly scheduled format to a 3 hour liturgical service filled with a mixture of prayer ministry, eucharist, annointing with oil and a way of “passing the peace” that involved everyone moving around the church greeting everyone else (not just those around them) amidst the joyful sounds of English and Spanish.
 
I’ve had hands laid on me as I’ve been prayed over by children speaking Hindi and a Honduran priest speaking Spanish. 
 
I’ve heard Indian children sing the same songs we sing at Day Camp in Connecticut.  I’ve watched people who care about revival sing the songs of the 70s that meant so much in that era – and I can remember those early days of discovering a relationship with Jesus.  I’ve worshipped at Adventures in Missions with passionate 20-somethings who know God speaks to his sons and daughters and whose freedom in worship pulls me forward and deeper.
 
As I realized the amazing diversity of this past month, I’ve reflected on a few things:

1. There is exquisite beauty in this diversity.  These are my brothers and sisters and it feels a bit like a glimpse of heaven – where people from every tribe and nation will gather around the throne singing praises. 
2. I’m grateful for the wide range of traditions that have shaped my spiritual life.  I was not raised in a liturgical church but at one point spent several incredible years in an Episcopal church and discovered that the liturgy and ritual fed something deep in me that I hadn’t even known was hungry.  I’ve sat under various preaching styles and different types of worship music.  I’ve been in churches that explained away the miraculous and in churches that expected it to happen regularly, where prayer teams saw people raised from the dead through prayer.  In all of these traditions, I've met people who love Jesus and worship from their heart.  (And in most of them I've also met people who go through the motions with no apparent heart connection.)
3. My ability to enter into worship depends more on my desire to worship, on my heart’s longing, than it does on the actual style.  This is not to say that we shouldn’t look for a “good fit” in terms of style preference or treaching content when we are looking for a home church.  But those things should never become the defining parameters of whether we can enter into worship at a given moment.

I've realized a caution as well.  If I let arrogance or pride slip in.  If I make assumptions about the validity of a particular type of worship.  If I subtly believe I’ve “outgrown” a certain “stage”.  If I overly value the western emphasis on a particular kind of education as the path to spiritual leadership.  Then I miss out on something important. 
 
My own worship is diminished when I fail to delight in my brothers and sisters in the way God delights in them.  Looking at the external, rather than at the heart, will always cause me to miss what really matters.
 
It's been an amazing month – a gift, a glimpse of what happens when earth begins to resemble heaven.  After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. (Rev. 7:9)