Go back in your imagination to one of your favorite school grammar classes – sentence diagrams. Can you see yourself in the classroom?
Remember subjects, verbs, and objects in a sentence structure? Remember diagramming sentences on the chalk board?
Subjects act, with a Verb, toward an Object.
In worship, this insight from the world of grammar is very, very important.
It is God who is the Subject of the worship sentence. We are the Objects of the worship sentence, toward which the Subject of the sentence acts through the Verb of Love. If our worship theology begins with God as the Subject of the worship sentence, acting toward us in love, then we are the Objects of His pursuing, relentless, all-consuming desire.
According to 1 John 4:19, we then “love Him,” because “He first loved us.” Worship is our response to God’s actions of love toward us. Then, and only then, does God become the object of the responsive, second worship sentence – as we respond to His initiatives of pursuing love.
Among the many things we may say or think about worship, we cannot get this wrong:
We are the pursued; God is the Pursuer.
Dan +
::
From: The 5 Day Worship Theology Email Course
Other Reading: Robert Webber, “God: The Object Or Subject Of Worship?”
Join the email list at www.DanWilt.com/Worship