What Is Worship?
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- Опубліковано 8 лют 2025
- Christian worship can take many forms. What exactly is it? Is there a “right” or “wrong” way to worship? In this video, Prof. Wright identifies the twin poles of worshipful expression - silent awe and exuberant praise - as equally necessary expressions that take us to a “different place” in the life of God.
After my wonderful conversion 52 years ago at the age of 21, I asked the Lord to enable me to worship Him without any kind of external aid such as, for example, a music group or a CD player. He answered my prayer quite quickly. I have worshipped Him ever since, it is better when I am alone with Him.
God meets us where we are, this is encouraging. Thank you for sharing this with our community.
--NTW Online Team
Worship is simply a physical demonstration of a grateful heart. It can be loud, quiet, or somewhere in between, but it involves all of imperfect lives for the grace of progress towards perfection. It takes a lifetime, but HE WILL finish it.
Thank you for this teaching, I REALLY needed it ---- HALLELUJAH!!!
Thank you for sharing this joy with us! We're glad you're here.
--NTW Online Team
I went through a very dark period which lasted a long time, but through it i learned that even simply turning to God or looking to him, no music or anything else, even this is worship. Even this little 'help' sighed out in the dark towards God, is worship. It may not dispel the dark immediately but it will help us go on.
A great video! The silent part of the worship remined me of a quote by St. Isaac the Syrian: ''the highest form of a prayer is to stand silently in awe before God''
These are beautiful reflections.
--NTW Online Team
Glory to God. I love this topic. Worship as an act of service. In all that we do. At work, at Church, in the giving of alms and so on. I like how the early Church in the book of Acts by the Holy Spirit, sold all their possessions and give it to and for the progression of the Kingdom of God.
Amen sister in Christ ❤✝️
Lovely, I was reading Acts 1-5 this morning
Amen and Amen !! Praise the Lord for you sir! Thank you for sharing wisdom and such wonderful knowledge !
Thank you for the warm encouragement! We are so grateful for this community.
--NTW Online Team
Prof. Wright, an insightful and poetic expository of God’s creational glory; that we exist to exalt Him, worshipping His holy name, forever.
Yes, and what a great calling!
--NTW Online Team
Your reference to concerts resonated with me. Whenever I attend a concert of classical music I find myself thanking God for giving me such a wonderful experience. Likewise, as you say, the absolute wonder of Creation. I am also a church attendee!
Wonderful to hear! Thank you for sharing your reflections and encouragement with us.
--NTW Online Team
Thank you for continuing to share your insights into this deep topic.
Thank you, Linda, for your support! We are grateful for our community.
--NTW Online Team
Amen🙏This was a wonderful topic about worship! The Lord Jesus Christ is worthy of all the worship and praise! I love the Lord Jesus with all my heart🙏✝❤Thank you so much for sharing Professor NT Wright. I love your videos as always. God bless you always.
We are grateful to rejoice with you in worship of our God!
--NTW Online Team
@ Praise God✝️❤️🙏
Love this topic. I clicked it sooo fast😩✝️
We're glad you're here, Shedaedra. We are grateful to be part of a community of God's worshippers together.
--NTW Online Team
Great work 👍
This was wonderful and inspiring. Thank you for all the scripture references-Revelations, Psalms…thank you
Thank you, Terri. We're grateful to be able to share these teachings on UA-cam! We're glad you're here.
--NTW Online Team
Excellent!
A brother in Christ who's graced with prophetic insight put forth the most profound and elevating definition of worship that I've ever heard.
"One of the deepest mysteries of salvation yet to be understood is the relationship of our destiny as redeemed worshippers to our new identity in Christ. Worship is more than the offering of songs and dances in praise and adoration to the Father. It is more than experiencing a spiritually empowered emotion or passion. It is deeper than the offering up of acts of obedience. Worship is even deeper than dedicating our lives to the purposes of God as living sacrifices."
"In its deepest, true worship flows from the surrendering up of our native identity in Adam to receive and become perfected in His identity as we gaze on the Father in His separated identity (Holiness). It’s from this deepest sense that all the preceding demonstrations (expressions) flow in reverse order."
(parenthesis mine).
As you can see, the definition above of true, New Covenant worship (scripturally based) doesn't much resemble what we hear in this video (emotionally based). Dr. Wright is teaching the very thing that has produced an entire generation (or more) of Sunday morning spectators to the weekly show they call a worship service. They literally believe that worshipping God is singing the two slower songs after the three faster songs every week. This is tragic. It's no wonder the body of Christ is in such a dismal place. It's been taught to believe the expression of a thing is the actual thing itself. The enemy once again gets our eyes off of Christ an onto all of the man-made distractions of churchianity. Help us Lord.
Will we ever 'properly' , truly worship Christ this side of eternity?? I'm not trying to make excuses for not doing so. But in our fallen imperfect state, I don't know if we can properly offer ourselves in this life, until we reach eternity... I was encouraged by Tom Wrights message here. And I don't once think he mentioned the "3 fast, 2 slow " worship songs to suffice as proper worship. Just my layman's response...
@annemarienelson458 Thanks for sharing.
And while I agree we're currently living in the "already, not yet" paradigm, the high call in Christ is to press on to know Him more today.
Also, I never actually stated that Dr. Wright had used the "two slow songs after the three fast songs" as his teaching. And I'm all but certain he would never agree with that concept of worship. Most wouldn't.
However, It's this oversimplified understanding of worship that's shared in the video, however well intentioned, that sets the groundwork and final stage for the superficial outworking of "worship" in modern christendom. This is mostly the only teaching heard from the pulpits today and it leaves people without a solid framework for what the worship of God truly entails. Authentic worship is far deeper and richer than the expressions it evokes from the human heart (obedience, praise, gifts, fruit of the Spirit, etc.). It's the very place of intimate communion between the human heart and its creator. Where our Adamic will is surrendered to the will of I Am. It's the very fundamental core of our very existence as His creation. Where we are born again as a new creation with a new identity: worshiper! And as a worshiper, the Lord will work in and through us to express Himself one to another and to the world in a multitude of wonderful and glorious ways (See parenthesis above) that were never previously possible. This is a daily walk of picking up our cross and following Christ. Offering ourselves as living sacrifices to our King.
Worship (surrender) fuels the worshiper. The expressions that come forth do not. They're simply the beautiful byproduct of this communion.
It seems that in the church at large everything is called worship. But, when everything is worship, then nothing is worship. It's no wonder the enemy has targeted this truth. It keeps people focused on the expressions and not on Christ. Which is always his scheme.
Thank you!
Phyllis, it means so much. Thank you, always, for your encouragement!
--NTW Online Team
Sharing in the life of the Triune God
Excellent as always. I read somewhere that worship always involved an element of sacrifice as well, but perhaps not?
Bravo!
Hallelujah! Amen. 🙏🏻 🎵
Worship is both a moment in time (eg church service) and a state of being (ongoing devotion).
Professor Wright, I was expecting a short exposition of the Greek term threskeia used by the apostle James and which denotes something more than religion, which comes from the Latin religare and which means to bind again. But, to bind what? It seems as if Latin is left incomplete, and this leads us to an approximate interpretation as if it were a liturgical system. But was that what the apostle James wanted to express? Or perhaps it was something that has something to do with worship? Are there other ways to translate the Greek term threskeia, such as "devotion, piety, consecration"? Is keeping oneself pure from the pollution of the world, and being pious towards the most disadvantaged, a form of worship for the Creator?
What about looking to our Creator with the increasing awe of a child.
@jacquelinejayamaha6372 yes of course
There is so much i could say, but for starters i want to ask, if this english word worship is so hard to understand why are we using it? Why are we not using more specific words? Like Praise and awe.
I had hoped this might include the greek words actually used in the new testament and the contexts.
It is very confusing to talk about a response to God we might feel like awe and praise and then talk about sacrifice (your bodies being a living sacrifice) and then equate worship with what we do at church on a sunday. Surely if worship (as it seems you are suggesting) is primarily a response to the knowledge of who God is and what Jesus has done for us, that is going to be personal to each person and nothing to do with what we do on a sunday morning in church. Did the early Christians actually 'worship' when they met together? Are you talking about community worship or are you talking about how we live as Chriatians every day of our lives presenting ourselves to God as a living sacrifice ie we don't need to go to temple and offer sacrifices anymore because the temple is destroyed and God now dwells in us! It seems to me you are discussing several different things, our responses to God when we know Him in His creation and in the work of Jesus and what those might look like. But also what we might do when we gather together as Christians, which is a totally different discussion i would argue. And does God need us to Worth-ship Him in our gatherings? Surely He doesn't ask for that 'sacrifice' anymore since we do that everyday living for Him. Perhaps in church it would be better to say we are praising God or now we are in awe of God, be more specific rather than using this non word 'worship'! Just a few thoughts! Big topic!
The English word worship explained as worth-ship does the corresponding words in Greek or Latin convey same meaning ? Because explained in this way does not give clear understanding on why God alone should be worshipped. Any other person/thing also has it's own worth.
No, the English word doesn't properly convey the meaning of the Hebrew and Greek words.
The basic meaning of the Hebrew verb שָׁחָה (shachah), which appears 172 times in the Old Testament and is translated 96 times as 'worship' in the RSV is 'to bow down', or 'to prostrate oneself', before God, a monarch or a superior. In the Septuagint, the corresponding Greek verb is προσκυνέω (proskuneó). In the New Testament προσκυνέω (proskuneó) appears 60 times, with the basic meaning 'to kiss the ground when prostrating oneself' before God, a monarch or a superior.
The Old and New Testament view of worship is one that combines the humble, reverential, attitude of mind _and body_ in homage. This is something rarely seen in churches today. Nowhere in Scripture does worship ever have anything to do with music, singing or dancing. Indeed, anyone who pays attention to what the Hebrew and Greek words mean and describe would recognize in an instant the implausibility of a worshipper doing any of those things while worshiping. Psalm 95:6 typifies the physical posture attending worship:
_O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker!_
Biblical praise, worship, blessing, thanksgiving, and prayer are all quite different things and we can't simply foist whatever we want on God and expect Him to accept it as whatever we choose to call it.
NT Wright is so wrong! He makes worship about us instead of about God. Plus he continually conflates it with praise etc.
@Berean_with_a_BTh Thanks for the explanation. Interesting to me that the same Hebrew/Greek word can be used for God, monarch or superior.
The evangelical worship of recent centuries where everyone goes to church with a bible was unknown for most of Christian history, simply because until Johannes Gutenberg invented commercial book printing in the 1400s, books - being hand-written - were extremely rare. In fact bound books didn't exist until about the 600s, probably a bit later. The Protestant Reformation which gave the laity access to Scripture was only made possible by this monumental advance in technology. St Luke tells us in Acts that the first Christians met for the breaking of the bread and the prayers. And one of the oldest surviving pieces of evidence of early Christain worship, the Didache, tells the same story
There’s also worboat 😂
Great video, Professor Wright! Thank you for all you do!
Thanks for the encouragement! We're grateful for our community and the truth they love and the hope they can share. Blessings to you in your kingdom work.
--NTW Online Team
Actually, it's appallingly bad. Wright hasn't got a clue what the biblical words for worship - שָׁחָה (shachah) in the Old Testament and προσκυνέω (proskuneó) in the New Testament actually mean, which is to bow down, or to prostrate oneself, before God, a monarch or a superior.
The Old and New Testament view of worship is one that combines the humble, reverential, attitude of mind _and body_ in homage. This is something rarely seen in churches today. Nowhere in Scripture does worship ever have anything to do with music, singing or dancing. Indeed, anyone who pays attention to what the Hebrew and Greek words mean and describe would recognize in an instant the implausibility of a worshipper doing any of those things while worshiping. Psalm 95:6 typifies the physical posture attending worship:
_O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker!_
Praise, worship, blessing, thanksgiving, and prayer are all quite different things and we can't simply foist whatever we want on God and expect Him to accept it as whatever we choose to call it.
@@Berean_with_a_BTh I agree with a lot of that, but you don't think music has anything to do with worship?
Ephesians 5:19: "speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord."
Colossians 3:16: "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord."
@ConvincedofChristianity You can answer the question for yourself just by reading the texts you cited. Where do they mention _worship?_
You need to stop confusing what today's church calls worship with what Scripture calls worship - they have _nothing_ in common.
@@Berean_with_a_BTh so you would say that making melody in our hearts or singing with grace in our hearts to the Lord isn't worship. Interesting. Would you make melody in your heart or sing with grace in your heart to Allah? If it isn't worship, you should be fine, right?
This is a very good series, thank you very much. May I ask a question? Why do you have a bald spot with no beard to the left of your mustache, but not the same on the right side (which would make it symmetrical)?
“Worship [proskuneo] the Lord your God and serve [latreuo] only Him ” (Luke 4:8). “The Father is seeking … people to worship [proskuneo] Him” (John 4:23). “Because of God's mercy … offer your body as a living sacrifice that is holy and pleasing to God. This is your reasonable service [latreuo]” (Romans 12:1).