Putting God into Worship

John 4:23-24 (NIV).
Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.  God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.

 
I was reading another Blog the other day that led me to a sleepless night.

5 ways to improve SA Worship by James Pedlar

Some comments on one of his points were talking about how we tend to spend more time singing about how "I" worship and how often we tend to get back to "it's all about ME" or "look at ME" more so that the worship being about God.

I'm am still struggling with this even now, as I often have sung and played songs about how I personally worship - I certainly have spent many hours trying to adjust my thinking and worship to concentrate on Him and not on me - and I have got to say - I'm getting more out of worship these days than I ever have. 

God has spoken to me in ways I have never heard of before (hence the Blogging) and I put this down to being completely focused on God in our Sunday services - trying to put the distractions of life (and Church) aside for a short time and spending quality time worshiping God.  Not just on Sunday's either I might add!  As much as I can throughout the week too. This has been a huge awakening for me and I can only recommend it to you too.

We have often sung:

I worship you,
I worship you,
The reason I live is to worship you.

Is this wrong ??

The comments also talk about how worship is being MC'd these days too, so I guess putting these 2 points together, we can get caught up in the fact the it can become a performance and the "look at me" part has the potential to take the focus off what we are trying to achieve - Worshipping God!

I know we do this at our Church, but I haven't felt this as a problem.  Maybe others have, or other Churches do, but I guess it's all about what we as individuals are bringing to the worship experience - are we expecting to get something out of it, or are we putting all of ourselves in to worshiping God and God alone?

One of my favourite songs (written by James Curnow) is:

Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness,
Worship the Lord in the spirit of praise.
Bow down before Him,
Love and adore Him,
Come let us worship in spirit and truth.

So as I write this - I'm none the wiser as to what the writer (and the subsequent writers of the comments) was trying to get across.  I think I'll continue to do worship the way I have this year - It's working for me.
(and hopefully I'll get some sleep tonight!!)