Once, as an anniversary gift, I gave my wife a pink iPod Nano. She unwrapped it, loaded it with music, and began to enjoy its benefits. Sadly, somewhere along the way the battery lost its ability to hold a charge. This lack of power has rendered the iPod almost completely useless and very frustrating. The songs and pictures are still on the hard drive, the case looks great, the buttons all work, the screen is crystal clear, but no matter how nice the rest of the iPod is, the reality is that without the battery, nothing works. You can push all the buttons you want and connect the nicest headphones in the world, but it still won’t light up or make a sound. It has the form of an iPod without the function of an iPod.
Worship is a lot like this pink iPod, which of course is the whole point of mentioning it here, because it, too, has a “battery” of sorts. The thing that you must have in order for any part of worship to work is … your heart. All worship must come from your heart. Without it, nothing you do matters. You can sing songs, give offerings, and do all the “right” things, but without those actions originating from your heart you will only have the form of worship without the function of worship.
Jesus said in Mark 7:6-7, “…This people honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. And in vain they worship Me…” (NJKV). It’s important to notice that they are saying the right things, but yet God says that it is “in vain,” which means it’s useless or pointless. To understand worship, you must know that your heart isn’t something on the list of things that God wants—it is the only thing on the list. Your heart is the key to being productive in worship because without it everything you try to offer God is in vain.
Many people, including most Christians, don’t have any idea of just how important their heart is to God even though the Bible is filled with scriptures that have to do with the heart. Here is a small sampling.
In order to be saved… “that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”
(Romans 10:9 NKJV). Notice it does not say to believe in your brain.
In the parable of the sower (Mathew 13) the Word is sown in your heart.
Luke 6:45 NKJV
“A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”
Proverbs 23:7 NKJV
“For as he thinks in his heart, so is he…”
Jeremiah 31:33 NLT
“…I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.”
Matthew 6:21 NKJV
“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Deuteronomy 6:5 NKJV
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.”
1 Samuel 16:7 NKJV
“…For the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
Proverbs 3:5 NKJV
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.”
Ok, so that was a lot, but there are more, a lot more. If you look for the word “heart” in the Bible, depending on which version you use, you will find it used more than 500 times. Just in case you were wondering, that’s a lot. You’ll also find that the word “heart” is used in many major verses and is a central theme of the Bible. Just from the few verses I already mentioned, we can see that you can’t get to heaven without believing in your heart, God speaks to you there, it determines your treasure, it produces what you say, and it’s the place where God looks at you. That’s some important stuff!
When I finally figured out that worship just doesn’t work without your heart, it changed everything. It made me examine whether or not I loved singing and playing music with all my heart or if I loved God with all my heart. Why was I saying what I did? Was it because it sounded cool or was it what I truly wanted to say? I had to stop going through the motions because I discovered that without my heart I was wasting my time. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t know what my heart actually was, so I had to begin to search it out so I didn’t waste a single moment of time pushing buttons on a good-looking but useless pink iPod.
excerpt from an upcoming book from Steve + Shawn