Storage
The longer I follow Jesus the more I view worship as directly connected to discipleship.
It's a double-sided coin:
1) God receives obedience (the activity of a disciple) as worship.
Romans 12:1 | Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.
John 14:15 | If you love me, keep my commands.
2) Worship is also the release valve of discipleship.
After we’ve tasted and seen the fruit of apprenticing under Jesus, we naturally express praise and adoration and worth with our words and actions:
Luke 6:45 | For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.
Colossians 3:16 | Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.
Worship is both the source and expression of discipleship.
A true worshipper can’t help but grow in discipleship.
A true disciple can’t help but worship.
Jesus illustrates this so profoundly in Luke 6:
Luke 6:43-45 | NIV
No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers. A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.
As worship team members specifically placed in the body of Christ for the purpose of “[declaring] the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Pet. 2:9), what comes out of our mouths is obviously important. But the source of our words is even more critical.
And in Luke 6, Jesus clearly gives us the roadmap for ensuring that our words are not fake or contrived but rather a natural expression of our friendship and faithfulness to Him and His way.
Storage is discipleship.
Storage requires slow, patient and faithful cultivation over years and seasons of planting, watering, fertilizing, protecting, harvesting, refining, building, transferring and loading.
Luke 6:43-45 is a picture of a harvest placed in barns. It’s a picture of care and cultivation and craft.
Not an instant deposit but a cumulative collection of daily activity that slowly fills the storehouse.
To make this illustration practical, think about your typical Sunday morning experience—what state is your heart, mind and soul in when you load in your gear at 8am?
What are you feeling and processing during rehearsal and finally when the service starts? How connected are you to the person of Jesus in the middle of a song?
Some of you may not have a problem with this at all, but I know for me, more often than not, I feel like a manager of the moment rather than a participant and fellow presence-seeker.
Of course the very real and practical and technical aspects of leading a set of songs in a service can be very mentally taxing, but I also have to be honest and admit that what’s been stored up in my heart not just over a week but over an entire season has the most impact on how my soul responds to a worship service than just about anything else.
The deposits of time in the Word, of prayer, of community, of service, of loving others, of listening, of solitude, of fasting, of simplicity, of resting, of being loved by the Father are what ultimately give me the ability to approach a Sunday morning with freedom, connection and presence.
It’s easy to give God lip service and sing the songs and say the things we should say and look the part.
But true worship that’s tethered to our heart’s actual condition will only come through regular and steady deposits into the storehouse of discipleship.