Who Do You Worship?

Who Do You Worship?

Happy are those who hear the joyful call to worship, for they will walk in the light of your presence, LORD.

Psalm 89:15

The other night I took my daughters to see Justin Bieber: Never Say Never. We made the mistake of arriving five minutes before the movie started, too late to snag anything but seats in the front two rows of the theater. But that was just the start of my punishment. Having misread the showtimes, I was stuck purchasing tickets to the 3-D version. There would be no place to hide from Bieber’s famous mop of hair, swirling just millimeters from my face.

Surrounded by an ocean of girls, I spotted only two males in attendance—a clueless dad and a hapless boy, no doubt dragged to the theater by enthusiastic family members. Speaking of enthusiasm, I was shocked by how loud a couple hundred teenagers can scream. We faced the double assault of girls screaming on the big screen as well as in the theater itself. It was a deafening but hilarious experience to hear all these kids so worked up over a sixteen-year-old boy, all the more amusing because it so vividly recalled a Beatles movie I had seen in prehistoric times. I remember sitting in the back of the theater feeling annoyed by all the girls up front who were bouncing up and down, waving their hands in front of the screen and screaming at the top of their lungs. I liked the Beatles, but I couldn’t understand the frenzy of passion they were able to create in many of my friends’ hearts.

My brush with Bieber-mania reminds me that our sense of peace is directly influenced by what or whom we worship. I have yet to meet a single person who will admit to feeling more peaceful due to adulation of a superstar. But canvass a roomful of Christians, and you will be hard put to find someone who hasn’t experienced God’s presence and peace in worship.

Today let us worship him.

Lord, let my heart be filled with passion as I think about your beauty, grace, and strength. Fill me with the knowledge of your presence, I pray.