Frondeur Friday: God does not care about your singing

In case you're wondering, a frondeur was a member of the Fronde party in France which led to civil war in the 17th Century. Sometimes I look at my own organization and want to dare someone to dare me to eat cake.

(That's generally a bad idea, because I can eat a lot of cake.)

As a member of a Christian denomination association community of churches on the leading cusp of new worship music, I have a bone to pick with us.

For the last time, worship does not begin and end with an acoustic guitar or cool melody hook or goose bumps and raised hands.

Worship is about a life of service. It's a defended position of the heart. Like Gatorade, it's what inside of you -- and, as the Bible says, what produces what comes out of you.

While you're singing words like "we praise You" and "we exalt You" and "we adore You" consider how often you actually have fallen on your face and done those things. At least outside of church service.

The point of worship is to live a life of worship, not just a life of uptempo songs, because God doesn't want our tools of worship, he wants our hearts of worship. God should be the object of our worship, because he is deserving of our adoration, and we must worship him in spirit and truth.

John 4:23 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. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

Does this sound like God is organizing an earthly worship band with killer horn licks? God is not a Holy Blues Brother. He really doesn't care that your latest diddy borrows from Psalms and sounds like Coldplay. God is God, and we are not, and that distinction demands to be recognized every moment of our lives.

God is seeking people with hearts of worship, circumcised in the heart, willingly to sacrifice even their bodies to the cause of the Kingdom. That is worship, and I don't care if it's expressed with an Ibanez, a Hammond B3, or a lyre.

Or by housing the homeless, or feeding the hungry, or clothing the naked, or healing the sick, or proclaiming the Kingdom has arrived in Christ.

Worship with our mouths without the worship with our hands and feet is empty worship, and God rejects that.