I was in a church recently and in the time of worship I found I wasn’t focusing on God. Then I looked at the words of the song and I was stuck by the ‘subject’ of the song. When you look at a sentence you can discover the ‘subject’ by asking what or who the sentence is about? This song was full of ‘me’ ‘I’ and we. So the subject wasn’t ‘God’ the subject of the song was ‘me’ worshipping God. ie the subject of the song was ‘me’.
Now I don’t know about you but I don’t particularly want to sing about how good I am at worshipping God. I would prefer that the subject of the song was God and that I am Worshipping / singing about Him. So the songs that I like to use to lead me into worship are about God, and how Good He is and how wonderful He is, not anything at all about me, or how good my works or worship are. We do have a bit of a list of song titles on this website of albums and artists that tend to keep the main subject of their songs, God. Click here if you want to view or even sample some.
Just last year we were at a large worship / prayer house in the USA and an artist got up and started to sing about how he wanted his tombstone to say what a lover of God he was. I’m sure his heart was great and he was wanting to say how he wanted his life to honor God. But in the group listening and participating I didn’t want to find myself singing about what a great worshipper he was. Ie the subject of the song, or what the song was about was him.
So I have found it a good practice to look at the subjects of our worship songs and make sure that they contain God, songs may have a blend of subjects but I believe to be true worship the main subject needs to be God, because we are worshipping what we are singing about. Now please don’t anybody take this as a new way to criticise or correct people, taking someone to task if you find a worship song where the subject isn’t God, we can in love gently introduce the thought that the subject of worship songs is important, please remember there is a place for other songs in worship & church as people have many needs and hurts and God loves to meet those in so many ways. The point of this blog is to mention that if you are looking for songs to lead you into ‘worshipping Him’ ie. getting your eyes and thoughts off yourself and onto Him, then ones that are about Him and his attributes are wonderful for doing this.
Our Greek/western way of thinking tends to make all things about us, we are the centre of the universe, the most important person on the planet is you! Man is god and everything can be explained, researched and understood. These are Greek thinking patterns that I want to submit don’t fit Christianity, because we are not the centre of the universe, God is. We are not the most important person on the planet, man isn’t god, God is and He is jealous of that position, and while people try to explain and research God, He is unfathomable! He is way more than a concept, He is God the King of the Jews, the creator of the universe and everything in it. And guess what He cannot be fully understood! His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts.
This western influence may want to bring the focus of our worship subtly around to us, but I want to suggest that true worship, those that worship in Spirit and in truth, will be single-mindedly focusing their worship and the ‘subject’ of their praise on the one and only true God, Jesus Christ the Messiah.