What is God's Best Part?

You may be reading the title of this piece, and wonder, What IS the best part? It would be easy to think it is your time and service for Kingdom sake…you know, things like ushering, Sunday School teaching, singing in the choir. Someone else may consider their faithfulness to church services and tithes paying to be the best part. Still others may see it in the amount of offering they give to missions.

All of these things are noteworthy…we should be faithful in working for the Lord, assembling ourselves in the Household of Faith, returning unto the Lord a tithe, and supporting those who labor on the frontlines of ministry. In these things God is pleased, but is any of this the best part?

Recently I have learned that the best part is not anything that would readily come to mind…to put it simply, God’s best part is worship. Bishop Tom Fred Tenney made it plain when he said that those who stay out of a service until the preaching, saying, “I came for the best part,” are thinking selfishly. Bishop asked, “What about God’s best part?” We want to be ministered to, but God is asking, “Who will minister to me?”

It amazes me that there are people who run from worship because a song is ‘old school’, or the other side of the coin, because it is hip and new.

Some stay away from the worship portion of a service because the music is too fast or too slow…it's too loud or not loud enough. Some folks like to sing hymns and southern gospel while others only want the upbeat, urban contemporary sound.

All of this is, first, personal preference, and second, assumption that the worship is in the song. If that were true, how shallow worship would be.

No, worship is not in the song or the singer/musician. Worship that is right is that which comes from the heart of an individual.

Worship means to extol, magnify; show reverence, adoration, devotion, homage, honor, respect, esteem, exaltation, praise, admiration, adulation, glorification to.

I find it interesting that praise is listed in the definition of worship, for so many people separate them… "Worship is for who He is, and praise is for what He does. Worship is a slow song, and praise is fast. Worship is on your face, and praise is in the dance.”

But the fact of the matter is, we make things so complicated when we try to analyze and be technical about every thing we do. We can worship Him for what He does as easily as we praise…we can praise Him for who He is as easily as we worship. We can clap our hands in worship AND in praise...we can dance in praise AND in worship.

We really need to stop complicating something as uncomplicated as God's best part.

Worship and praise is NOT in the beat or style of a song. True worship is that which is offered in spirit and in truth (John 4:24). Notice the lower case ‘s’ in the word spirit…it indicates that this is our spirit and not the Holy Spirit. In other words, we are to worship Him with our emotions.

Someone once said, “We can be emotional without being spiritual, but we can’t really be spiritual without involving our emotions.” Because we are emotional beings, our worship can’t help but be this way as well. We may lift our hands, stomp our feet, leap for joy, run an aisle, fall on our face, kneel in reverence, weep with heartfelt devotion, and it is ALL worship.

As noted in the beginning, worship is ministry. While you may have thought you didn’t have a place in ministry, worship is something everyone can do. In worship we minister unto the Lord, He ministers to us, and only then does He minister through us. The worship portion of our services is not a ‘filler’ to take up time before the preaching of the Word. It is ministry unto the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords!

Let me encourage you today to become a true worshiper. Please do not be dismayed because the presentation in our services is not what it was back in the day.

I remember when there was one devotional/worship leader, and we sang nothing but choruses. Today, there are praise teams, and we sing complete songs. But we are not an emergent church because we try a new way. We are simply taking the innovations of this day and adding to what we already have.

With one hand holding to the best of the present, let us hold to the best of the past with the other, lifting them both in worship, for this is God’s best part!