Should I Sing During Praise & Worship?

I was 16 years old when I first attended my very first worship conference that saw thousands of young people flooding an auditorium with anticipation and excitement.

I remember seeing many heartfelt faces with hands raised up high singing their hearts out to The King. Some even went to the extent to dance, shout and scream. Since it was my first worship conference experience, a lot was going through my mind, but to be honest, it sort of made me wonder and ponder what was driving and making these people "behave" like this.

When we hear the word “worship,” most of us think of the songs we sing every Sunday morning. But we need to first understand that, music has nothing to do with worship because actually, worship is the respond of our heart and love towards God. When we sing to God and play music to Him, it is merely the expression of our love and adoration towards him that is already in our hearts. But the beauty of this is that worship is not just limited to music and singing, but it can be anything and everything we do that allows us to express our love for Him. It can be writing, drawing, dancing and even speaking! 

But that leaves us with the question of how do we express this love and adoration in our heart towards God. It is quite unreasonable to think that we can be worshipping God without allowing it to affect our hearts and emotions. Time and time again, David urges and pleads with Israel to “clap your hands!” and “shout unto to God with a voice triumph!” David also tells us to “dance with job before the Lord” and to “sing with all your heart!”

The fact of the matter is that we are all emotional beings with different ways of personal expression. When we truly and deeply understand who God is and what He has done for us on the cross, our hearts will respond to those thoughts with feelings. But at the same time, it is important to remember that an emotional expression of worship is only god- centered when it is rooted in a proper understanding of who God is.

The focus of worship is not where we worship, or how we worship, or when we worship; the focus of our worship is in who we worship. Therefore, I do hope that we come to a place where we care more about loving, desiring, and worshipping God will all of our hearts, mind, soul and strength than we do about anything else. We are created for worship.

"Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth. Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.  Know that the LORD is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture." - Psalms 100: 1-5