love songs

So last night I attended a church service with a couple of friends. We had been hanging out all afternoon, having a good time and all that fun stuff. So sometimes it's hard to get into the mindset of church mode, especially when already having gone that morning. This was my initially thought to my jadedness of the first song that was sung. I felt somewhat annoyed. Then I figured it's me being stupid and using my excuse of having worked at this church and being jaded by everything that they do. I pushed past that thought only to come to the realization that I was really bothered by the words in the song.

Now, I do like a certain style in worship, but I've been around long enough to know that musical stylings is not the heart of it, and that worship goes beyond the songs we sing before the service. But these words, they were banging around in my head as if someone shot a gun inside a metal room to watch the bullet ricochet. I slowly became aware of how self focused the song was. I heard the word 'I' too many times for me to be able to focus on God. It felt like the writer was just talking about them self and then threw in a little something for God at the end of the verse. This then got me going on a snow ball effect. While all this was going on I started wondering how many other songs have I aimlessly sung along to that had a similar type of lyric. I started going over my favorite worship songs in fear that I would find my annoyance in the ones I really liked. Then I stumbled across another thought, one that never really had occurred to me. At first I was horrified by it, only to remember something I had heard recently. I can't remember it word for word, but the idea was that worship is like admiring the significant other. How both men and women are different in how they receive compliments, and how God is the same way. God has the qualities of both masculine and feminine feature in which we are to worship. Essentially our worship for our significant other is the prime example of how our worship is for God. Bride and groom complimenting each other as Christ and the church do.

This new thought of worship songs made it all make sense. And it's funny how in my 5 years of playing on worship teams, it took this moment for me to realize it. Our worship is a love song to God. Whether it be in song or our lives, we are singing love songs to God. Now like I said, this at first horrified me. I instantly thought of that stupid Justin Bieber song with his incessant use of the word 'baby' in it. But then I thought of how, out of passion, one writes a song deep from the soul for the one they love. That yearning desire to be with their love, translated into words, played along with the melody of soul, made into a song from the heart. Whether in literal song or action, that is worship.

So, in my 5 minutes quest to see if I was offensive to myself, I find that the songs are not written for the self. Some may be bothersome, but it's not my place to be bothered. All I can do is worship God, even if I don't agree with something I hear because it's not about me. I'm there to sing a love song.