what God hears

Last week I attended a conference at the North Campus of Hickory Grove Baptist Church. This was the Seminars4Worship that is presented by Integrity Music. They offer 3-4 of theses conferences around the country, and I was excited when I learned that this was going to be so close. I would get the opportunity to listen to some excellent speakers on the subject of worship, and get to hear some really good christian artists perform their songs that we do here each week. I always approach these events with anticipation; what will I hear?; what can I learn from these people?; what can I take back with me?; what will I be challenged with?

One thing that I heard was from a statement by Glenn Packiam. Glenn is the Leader of the New Life Worship Institute in Colorado Springs, CO. He is also a songwriter for the Desperation Band, and we have sang a few of their songs. Anyway, I was in a small class setting where he was the speaker. In his talk he said that "Worship needs to be us hearing what God hears", and then he went on to tell us some things that God may very well be hearing. While he was giving examples filled with statistics, I kept hearing that statement over and over in my head, and kept asking myself......."what is God hearing?" (I'm not one to listen to a lot of statistics) So, what is God hearing? Do we hear the same thing? Are we getting His attention with our worship? Is He getting our attention? Sometimes I think that we may not truly understand what worship is. If we try to hear what God hears, we might not hear music.........we may hear suffering, we may hear the hurting, we may hear the needy. And if we hear the needs of people, what would our worship sound like? What would our worship look like? Our worship is a response. It is an outward expression of our inward desire to understand what God wants us to do. "Worship is designed to wake us up to the world, not insulate us from it." (Glenn Packiam) If we only worship when we are at church, what does that tell us about our worship. However, if the church responds in a crisis and meets the needs of the needy, then that speaks volumes about the worship of the church.

This new series, "Whatever It Takes", is giving us all the opportunity to respond to the needs of our community with our worship. All we need to do now..........is to be willing to listen and hear what God hears.........and respond in worship.