Pray for us as a worshipping community

by Chris Wolfe

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with my position here at City Church. The work is great, I love playing music and singing to our great God! The title itself is what I’m not fond of; I don’t like being called a “worship” leader or “worship” director. Why? Because while one definition of worship  does refer to the outward praise and glorification of God, another equally legitimate definition includes everything the believer does when their heart is directed to glorifying and revering God. Calling me the worship leader then could imply a level of importance and responsibility that my position just doesn’t have. I’m not saying it “should” have that much importance either, I just think that the title is too broad. However, the upside to this vague title is that when I’m asked to write a blog on prayer as it relates to worship, I can take that prompting in almost any direction I want. So instead of telling you why prayer is important for worship, I’m going to tell you why prayer is worship. To do so, I’ve pulled three passages from scripture that I believe each highlight a unique aspect of prayer as a mode or means of worship.

First, we’ll look at, Isaiah 29:13 “The Lord said: ‘These people approach me with their speeches to honor me with lip-service, yet their hearts are far from me, and human rules direct their worship of me.’” Isaiah doesn’t actually address the act of prayer here, but he does highlight the fact that when we think of worship in narrow terms, as a merely outward expression, that tends to be what it actually becomes. How much of the worship our God deserves is robbed from him because we’ve deceived ourselves into believing that what we’re doing on the outside matches what’s happening on the inside? Definitely too much. How do we identify that our hearts are not where they should be? We ask God to reveal it to us, through prayer. How do we restore our hearts to right standing? We can’t. We can only ask God to do it for us, again, through prayer. To put it bluntly: If you don’t think of prayer as a necessary part of worship, it’s quite likely that you aren’t worshipping as much as you think you are.

Second, we’ll turn a couple of pages, and centuries, to look at Matthew 6:9-10 “Therefore, you should pray like this: ‘Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’” This example of prayer as worship is probably the plainest and easy to see. Jesus himself is directly instructing the disciples to worship God in their prayers. If you go ahead and read the rest of the Lord’s prayer yourself, you’ll find that Jesus spent more words glorifying and worshipping God through prayer than on any other thing he prayed for (in the CSB at least).

Lastly, we’ll turn to John 14:13 “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” This verse reveals the reason why God answers our prayers in the first place: his own glory. When we pray and ask God for something that he will provide, we are worshipping God by fixing our eyes to yet another avenue for his might and glory to be put on display! As we ask God for things, we are acknowledging and trusting in his power and ability to do the things we ask. Not only does this mean that these prayers are a form of worship, but it’s yet another reason for us to hold nothing back and bring everything to the Lord in prayer.