Relating Imagination to Worship

by Byron L. Spradlin

Worshiping the true and living Triune God, at its core, is participating in the mystery of reverentially approaching the morally beautiful, Supreme and Transcendent One through the work of Christ as energized by His Holy Spirit.

Worship means to bow before Him to honor and acknowledge his supremacy, primacy, and majesty; confessing in awe, wonder, fear, and delight our absolute need of His gracious mercy and provision. Worship is responding with both adoration and action to His Self-revealed glory, holiness, love, forgiveness, and purposes through our worship-motivated service on His behalf every day of our lives.

And, since winning worshipers to the True and Living God from every tongue, clan, and people is the ultimate agenda He’s given us to pursue until He comes again then those He has gifted with unusual wisdom in imaginative design and expression are absolutely to be front and center in creating contextualized environments and leading others into those environments. In fact, worship will not be effective without musicians and artists working toward those ends because God’s Word has revealed this to be the case.

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth!

Serve the Lord with gladness!
Come into his presence with singing!

Know that the Lord, he is God!

It is he who made us,

and we are his;

we are his people,

and the sheep of his pasture.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving,

and his courts with praise!
Give thanks to him; bless his name!

For the Lord is good;

his steadfast love endures forever,

and his faithfulness to all generations.

Psalm 100

We should repeatedly and prayerfully reaffirm before Him our request that He deepen each of us in our private and personal worship of Him. I am confident that, if we do go deeper as worshipers ourselves, we will have little trouble in seeing our theology align itself with biblical revelation. And, at the same time, we will become a great asset to Church to carry out the artistic good works of revealing God’s truth, beauty, and goodness for which He prepared in advance for us to be “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone” (Ephesians 2:20).