My church cleans a two mile stretch of our road in our state’s Adopt-A-Highway program. A number of years ago while cleaning, I came across three different roadkill animals on the same day. It was nasty. It was undignified. This week we have been studying David’s wild dancing during a worship procession, about which he commented “I will be even more undignified than this.”
Perhaps you need to be more expressive in your worship. Perhaps you’ve been held captive to praising God because of fear of what people around you might think. Not all personalities are the same, and so I’m not saying that unless we all worship just like David did, we’re somehow bad worshipers. But deep within you, have you desired to worship more expressively, but you’ve been holding out? I’m with you. I struggle with that.
But let’s not contain this just to worship on Sunday morning. A New Testament understanding of worship says clearly that every act in our lives should be an act of worship. And we need to be more undignified with our lives, willing to give ourselves completely to God, out of thankfulness, out of praise, out of complete surrender to him, just like David.
Therefore, 2 Samuel 6 applies to worship in all of life. The principle that emanates from David is that because God keeps his promises to us, we should be willing to lose our inhibitions for him. We are so grateful that God would love us and keep his promises to us that we would literally do anything for him. That deep thankfulness should cause us to live boldly with ecstatic joy. Just as Paul wrote in Romans 12:1 “In view of God’s mercy, present your bodies as living sacrifices.”
Consider how the different generations can be undignified to each other. Many churches have five different generations in their church family. Busters, Boomers, Gen X, Millenials, Gen Z. We are all people, but our age and cultural differences can make us seem so different. We can feel unnatural about having close relationships with other generations. Normally we think about the other generations like Michal, in judgment, or with sarcasm, “They are wrong to act like they do.” How about practicing some undignified worship and reach out and become friends with the people in another generation? It will take some work, but it is so, so needed!
My guess is that your church leaders would love to include more volunteers in your worship gatherings. Can you help? Would you be willing to feel undignified to serve the Lord?
Maybe join a prison worship team. Maybe help a refugee resettlement agency so you can interact with people from different cultures. Or visit your church’s homebound members, letting them know they are not forgotten. Maybe you’re older and you can reach out in love to the youth in your church. Maybe there is someone in the church that drives you crazy and you need to get to know them better. It means you need to be undignified.
How about you? How do you need to worship the Lord? How do you need to become undignified to the world, but worshiping Jesus?
So I encourage you to practice!
There is a particular jubilant song called “Dignified.” The song includes the words, “I will dance, I will sing to be mad for my king/Nothing, Lord, is hindering the passion in my soul./And I’ll become/Even more undignified than this./Some would say it’s foolishness/But I’ll become/Even more undignified than this.”[1]
Think about how you might be holding out on God, and how you might need to become more undignified. What do you need to do?
[1] Redman, Matt. 1995. “Undignified.” http://www.worshiptogether.com/songs/songdetail.aspx?iid=577310.
Photo by Denisse Leon on Unsplash
Engaging Scripture 