In my family, the love for sports and the love for music got passed down together through my father. If you see one, the other one is not far behind. I’ve been thinking about this during our teaching series on worship.
The weekend we began the series, I went to the park to take pictures when I saw an unsupervised basketball on the court. I did what every basketball lover does: make sure its owner wasn’t around and shoot. The next week, I got a basketball for myself and increased my playing time. That’s when I started pondering the similarities between the lifestyle of playing basketball and the lifestyle of worship.
Both basketball and worship produce joy. I look forward to playing the game I loved at first sight. I look forward to playing an instrument for God. Both give me the joy of being alive and authentic, embodying the fullness of who God made me to be.
Both basketball and worship take work and practice. As a kid, I worked at practicing my range. Being short means that it’s better to practice longer range shots and shooting under pressure. Now that I am older, it is about allowing my body to get used to each movement. My first couple of shots feel weird and I miss badly. Then my body adjusts and I see how the different ranges feel when the shot starts going in.
When I started playing drums and piano at BridgeWay, it took a lot of work to learn the songs and learn the mechanics of the different instruments. It took work to learn the mindset of the band and how could I make it work for me. As time went on, I got better, and I can get away with less practice time. It still takes some work. Not everything is about prepping for Sunday. I work at personal worship time. I go for songs that I can worship God with that isn’t connected to Sunday. That takes practice, both to learn the songs and to focus on just God.
Both basketball and worship require faith. When I take three-point shots, sometimes my mind gets in the way and I overthink what I’m doing. It usually works out better to get out of my intellectual mode and trust the moment I’m in and the practice I’ve done. Once I do that, my three pointers start going in rather consistently. 100% accuracy isn’t needed. I can leverage the laws of physics, and trust that it will do its thing.
The lifestyle of worship requires faith that God is here and that he receives our worship. It requires faith that God delights in our worship, even if we make mistakes or we’re not in the perfect mindset for it going in. It is an act of faith that God wants us to try, even if we miss the mark of where God wants us to go. It takes faith to try again and trust that the process will align us more and more to the heart of God. It is not possible to have a lifestyle of worship without faith.
Flexibility and mindfulness are also needed for both basketball and worship. I have had two trips to the basketball court cut short due to isolated thunderstorms and one by the lawn-mowing company. That required flexibility and mindfulness of time and space. The lifestyle of worship works the same way. Sometimes things stop working or I only have a limited time to worship. Sometimes I worship and it feels like the Holy Spirit is wanting me to be mindful of the words that I am singing, or God wants me to sing the words that I need at that time to calibrate my perspective. Sometimes God challenges me to live out the words that I am singing more fully. This means adjusting to God and being mindful of him, because He’s the object of my praise.
The lifestyle of worship happens in relationship with God. Sometimes as life becomes more complicated, the less time and space I naturally have to worship. These ups and downs are a normal part of life. That means that my worship time needs more intentionality. It also means that grace for myself is needed to match the grace that God already has for me.
In the grand scheme of things, having worship be centered on relationship with God is the foundational requirement for all the other elements of the lifestyle of worship to fall into place. And God, the object of my praise, is what my lifestyle of worship is all about.