How To Worship With A Hole In Your Heart // Worship On The Word (Part 1)
This summary and strategic rewrite draws upon a message by Pastor Michael Todd of Transformation Church, initiating a series titled “Worship on the Word”. The series aims to provide believers with a deeper revelation and understanding of true worship, moving beyond ritual and emotion to applied spiritual wisdom.
The True Nature of Worship: Beyond the Sunday Service
The vision of Transformation Church (TC) is to represent God for the transformation of the lost and found in Christ. The core belief driving the series is that worship is the one area in a relationship with God that can genuinely inspire “awe”—a feeling that literally “takes your breath away”—regardless of how one enters His presence. Worship helps turn frustration into faith and broken pieces into a masterpiece.
However, the weakest place to worship is within a church service, despite the setting, lights, and music. True worship is authenticated in environments that seem unlikely or non-conducive for praise, such as a disliked job or a chaotic home life.
Worship vs. Expression
The sources stress that most people, including dedicated church members and platform leaders, do not have a true understanding of worship. Many mistakenly believe that worship is limited to the 15 minutes of slow songs at the beginning of a service when the lights go low. That is merely an expression of worship, which is the smallest sliver of what a worshipful life looks like.
The problem is that the church has done a bad job by letting people define worship incorrectly for a long time. God loves a worship life more than a worship song; a person could live according to God’s will and never sing a song, and their life would be more worshipful than those relying solely on music.
Worship Defined: Love Expressed as a Response to Grace
The anchor definition for the series is: “Worship is our love expressed to God as a response to his grace towards us”. This response stems from the greatest commandment: to love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, and mind, which is a demanding task achievable only through dependency on God.
The Only Gift You Can Give God
Worship is the only gift that humans can give God.
| Spiritual Activity | Direction/Recipient | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Prayer | To God, but for us | God does not need our prayers; we need the source of life and refreshing they provide. |
| Bible Reading | From God, but to us | God is the Word and did not need men to write it down to remember it; the Bible is for our benefit. |
| Giving | To God, but for us | Heaven is paved with gold, so our money does nothing for God; giving makes us more like God (generous). |
| Worship | For God, from us | Angels were created to worship, but human worship is special because it is a choice (it cannot be love if it is not a choice). |
God does not require our worship to sustain Himself or power miracles; He is God regardless of our praise. Instead, God, as a good Father, requests our worship. Just as a child’s expression of gratitude to a father literally “takes my breath away,” a daughter’s gratitude is the only genuine gift they can offer, because everything else they have is already his.
The Foundation of Wisdom: Knowledge, Understanding, and Application
To worship in wisdom, one must acquire an understanding. Wisdom is the “principal thing,” and believers should strive to “get an understanding” in all their getting (Proverbs 4:7).
The process of gaining wisdom requires three distinct steps:
- Knowledge: Consists of facts and information.
- Understanding: Is the ability to “perceive the intended meaning,” realizing why the facts make sense.
- Wisdom: Is “applied knowledge”.
The equation is: Knowledge + Understanding = Wisdom.
A practical example illustrates this: everyone has the knowledge that texting and driving is wrong. If a person wrecks their car while doing it, they gain an understanding (e.g., the consequence of riding the bus for eight months). However, without applying that knowledge and understanding, devotion to God’s word becomes an exercise in religion, ritual, and routine.
The Mother’s Day Wisdom
The speaker shared a personal story from 2014, when he had the knowledge that Mother’s Day was important and the understanding that moms like things, but he lacked wisdom. He mistakenly believed buying a random, late-night gift from Target was enough. His wife, who carried their baby for nine months, was devastated by the lack of effort, which ruined the day. This painful moment forced his knowledge and understanding to move to applied knowledge (wisdom), making Mother’s Day a priority like her birthday.
Worship Starts from Love, Not for Love
The foundation of genuine worship is not human effort but divine grace.
Worship starts with God’s love for us, not our love for God.
- Idolatry: If worship is love expressed, anything a person loves and expresses devotion to more than God becomes an idol (e.g., spouse, job, or children).
- Confidence in Unconditional Love: When a person is living a “wild life” or deep in sin, they are not naturally thinking about God. But worship starts with the love God showed while we were yet sinners (John 3:16). He has already proven His love.
- The Paradigm Shift: “We don’t worship for love; we worship from love”. We do not worship as a down payment for salvation or to earn “brownie points” for heaven; it is a response to His freely given love.