The Worship Suite

Ever since I can remember, I have loved singing to God.

When I was a child, I would put on kids’ praise and worship cassette tapes (yes, I am betraying my age here) and sing my lungs out. I know that I sang my lungs out because my parents would tell me. In no uncertain terms.

As a teenager, I often encountered God during the praise and worship part of church services. The worship seemed to connect with me. We are all different in how we naturally meet with God: some meet him in reading the Bible, others in hearing a sermon, still others in prayer.

I have always met God in music.

I have always met God in music.

I started dabbling in songwriting at the age of fifteen. My very first song was very bad. No, I will not play it for you. Just take my word for it. It was very bad.

The more I wrote, the more I worked out how to grip the inexplicable and shape it into words and rhythms and chords and melodies. I put pen to paper (in the days before iPads) and tried to express who God was and how I felt about him.

I love using music to express my heart for God. I can express love for God in lilting melodies, in rocking drumbeats, in the pause between words.

But it is difficult to say everything about God in the space of just one song. Even one hundred songs about God can fall short. There is, and always will be, an infinite number of things we can say to God and about God. And there is an infinite number of musical expressions for those things.

Even one hundred songs about God can fall short.

Often, one song alone does not feel like enough. I need more than one song. I need to keep pouring out praise to God like a relentlessly flowing river, like an unstoppable tsunami.

I think those moments must be what heavenly worship will be like, worship rising before God like a fragrance forever. I want my worship, the song of my life, to continue, to explore, to linger. I do not want to stop. I want to lavish my eternal God with eternal praises.

Hence I wrote a Worship Suite.

The idea of the Suite is that our worship is continual, not just for the duration of a four-minute song, but ongoing once the music has faded, once the words are finished, once the video is over. Because loving God is about more than a worship medley. God requires more than a song from us.

Our worship is continual.

Worship is more than singing. Worship is our whole lifestyle. It is about a limitless sacrifice to God, our days tuning into his wavelength, our every breath devoted to his praise. I have tried to capture that in the Worship Suite.

May our worship for God continue, past the end of these songs, past the video’s conclusion, never ceasing to magnify God in our fervent praise and our daily lives.

Do you experience God’s presence when you worship? How do meet with God? How can your day today be a sacrifice of praise to God? Share your story. Let’s have a countercultural conversation.

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