When the content of our songs and prayers are saturated with me-centered themes and thoughts, we are buying into the lie that worship is about us.
To be sure, our faces are in the frame, but they are a spec of sand on the beach of a vast ocean of beauty and holiness. To focus on the spec would be silly, if not outright madness.
God-focused worship.
When we gather for corporate worship, we are ascribing worth to the only worthy one and lifting him to the place where he alone belongs, on the throne of our hearts.
As we do this, he is with us in a very real way. This is not a hypothetical situation—God is with us. There is no greater privilege on earth for the redeemed and adopted family of God than getting to stand in the presence of God and worship him in Spirit and truth through his Son.
In doing so, we are building up and encouraging one another, reminding our own hearts of who God is and what he has done, and proclaiming it to a world that desperately needs to see him for who he is.
This is neither done by singing about ourselves nor obsessing over our preferential feelings.
He must increase.
If we are going to learn to worship in a selfie world, we must continually look beyond our musical preferences, sentimental nostalgia and contextual idealism in order to gaze with wonder and awe at the character and acts of our mighty King and Savior.
We must saturate our services and songs with his word and wonder at his wisdom, will, wealth, works and ways. He is the God who created planets and stars, and he holds them all in his hands. He made electrons and protons, atoms and elements, gravity and inertia. Everything that has been made was made by him and through him, and before any of its foundation was laid, he chose to redeem and adopt us in Christ. This is too massive to be minimized with me-centeredness.
May we all resist the temptation to fill the frame with our face, but rather fill our minds with his eternal glory, and never stop repeating the refrain of John 3:30:
“He must increase. I must decrease.”
“He must increase. I must decrease.”
“He must increase. I must decrease.”
