Remembering to Forget about Me

Spirituality Column #225
March 1, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Remembering to Forget about Me
By Bob Walters

How often we sit in church during a worship service – I know I have – imploring God for a way out of, through or around life’s cataclysms.

God’s glad we’re there talking to Him, and we’re glad He’s there to talk to. God’s available anywhere, yet sitting in church is where most of us feel closest to God’s ear.

But worship isn’t supposed to be about us or our present situation, good or bad. Worship is about God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit, not about “me.” We lose the best part of worship if we focus on our problems and desires rather than immersing ourselves in the true, powerful heart of worship, the heart of Jesus Christ.

The Christian life is about loving God and loving others. Jesus Christ is our example of what a Godly human life looks like. His love, peace, mercy, forgiveness, service, grace and more are outwardly directed manifestations of a life dedicated to God and humanity. For us those virtues can become vices if they are instead directed inwardly, selfishly … truly impeding our ability to worship God.

We don’t put a lamp “under a bowl,” says Matthew 5:15 (also Mark 4:21 and Luke 11:33). A “lamp on its stand” – Christ’s light in a Christian believer’s life – “gives light to everyone in the house.”

Christ’s life, death and resurrection are His light shining on us and bringing mankind back into communion with the Creator God. Our worship should reflect that light, remembering Christ’s unparalleled Kingdom gifts of defeating death, erasing sin, and restoring us to heavenly relationship. That’s bigger than anything I’d be praying for.

The bread and the cup of communion represent the closeness and reality of our covenant relationship with God through Christ, and with the community of believers with whom we share it. It’s a meal of love, a meal of remembrance, a meal in the here and now that attaches us to the eternity of God’s love, and to the eternal gift of Christ’s obedience, sacrifice and fellowship.

The fastest way to richer worship is spending more time outside of church praying. St. Paul tells us to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Amen. We should praise, pray, ask, thank, confess and witness in all that we do, all the time.

And when it’s time to worship, forget yourself and free yourself.

It’s all about Thee, not me.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that if one’s approach to worship is “What’s in it for me?”, by all means, go and find out.