Chris Tomlin on Worship

Worship leader Chris Tomlin (And If Our God Is For Us…, Hello Love) knows much about the celebratory nature of worship in our daily lives. In an interview by Jen Abbas in 2003 for FamilyChristian.com, Tomlin was asked to give his definition of exactly what worship is:

 

“Everybody is created to worship. It’s created in us and we can’t get away from it. That’s why we have so many stars — especially in America — because we have to worship something. True worship is the worship of the Creator, not the created. Paul said that when you are worshipping what’s created, you’re taking your eyes of your Creator. When we worship God, we’re recognizing who God is and what He has done, truly seeing the greatness of what He has done and responding to that. Worship is response.

“The definition that I learned from Louie [Giglio], is that worship is a response, both personal and corporate, for who God is and what He’s doing, evidenced in and through the way we live. Worship is more than singing songs. Songs have little to do with it. Jesus understood it when he said, “You praise me with your lips, but your hearts are far from me.” How many times have I done that? We ought to be pretty serious about what we worship, because it is eternal. Those who worship the created things — which all of us do from time to time — find it so unfulfilling.

“The way that we’re trained, worship is Sunday morning from eleven to twelve. That’s not true. That is worship, but that’s coming together. Hopefully we’re coming together to celebrate what we’ve been doing all week. What we mostly do is [consider that a worship service is] our one hour a week. [Then we leave] and don’t really consider God the rest of the week. It should be the other way around. That one hour should be a celebration of how we’re living our lives all week. That’s the greatest form of evangelism in the world. People wonder what in the world you’re connected to, because then they realize that what they worship doesn’t meet their needs. I love the fact that no matter who you are, whether you’re wealthy or poor, wherever you were born, wherever you live, that you worship and you can’t get away from it.”

 

Read more at Growthtrac A Conversation with Chris Tomlin, Part Two, Christian Marriage Articles – Growthtrac http://www.growthtrac.com/artman/publish/a-conversation-with-chris-tomlin-part-two-210.php#ixzz1dL0E914s