Defining Worship

When we try and define worship, we often find ourselves in the same position. Worship is such a vast concept that no one definition can contain it. Instead, I find I end up collecting little quotes and ideas that give me glimpses of the incredible, dynamic adventure that we call worship.

It is very difficult to define worship, partly because our human language is limited, but God’s greatness has no limit. Also, our worship of Him cannot be bound to mere words. At best, our definitions are glimpses of God’s greatness and our responses to His magnificence.

Go HERE and HERE to find some more definitions of worship

Merriam-Webster: Worship is…reverence offered a divine being or supernatural power; also : an act of expressing such reverence

…extravagant respect or admiration for or devotion to an object of esteem

Arthur Pink: Worship is our soul bowing before God in adoring contemplation of Him.

Dan Block: Reverential human acts of submission and homage before the divine Sovereign, in response to his gracious revelation of himself, and in accordance with his will.

John Stott: Christians believe that true worship is the highest and noblest activity of which man, by the grace of God, is capable.

Worship Central: “Worship is the total alignment of our heart, soul, mind and strength with the will of God. It is our whole-hearted response to God’s extravagant love and mercy.”

Bob Kauflin: Christian worship is the response of God’s redeemed people to His self-revelation that exalts God’s glory in Christ in our minds, affections, and wills, in the power of the Holy Spirit

Bob Kauflin: Biblical worship is God’s covenant people recognizing, reveling in, and responding rightly to the glory of God in Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Calvin: Worship is to acknowledge Him to be, as He is, the only source of all virtue, justice, holiness, wisdom, truth, power, goodness, mercy, life, and salvation. – “Necessity of Reforming the Church”

David Peterson: Worship of the living and true God is essentially an engagement with him on the terms that he proposes and in the way that he alone makes possible. – “Engaging with God”

Ralph Martin: Christian worship, then, is the happy blend of offering to God our Creator and Redeemer through Jesus Christ both what we owe to Him and what we would desire to give Him.  – “Worship in the Early Church”

A. W. Tozer: Worship is to feel in your heart and express in some appropriate manner a humbling but delightful sense of admiring awe and astonished wonder and overpowering love in the presence of that most ancient mystery, that majesty which philosophers call the First Cause, but which we call our Father which art in heaven.

Vivien Hibbert: Worship is an encounter with God that ruins us forever