Worship Scripts

I will pray with my spirit,
but I will also pray with my mind;
I will sing with my spirit,
but I will also sing with my mind.
(1 Corinthians 14:15)

True worship of God is a dance between the head and the heart, with the Holy Spirit as the dancing instructor. If we think about God, but our emotions are unmoved, the dance is unsatisfying, and unglorifying to God.  He is worthy of more. 

And if the emotions are firing on all cylinders, but the head is disengaged, then we are dancing without any form, were just flopping around on the dance floor. 

The truth about God registers in the head first, and we were created to respond to truth in some emotive way.  Thus the bible instructs us to sing, clap, pray, dance, shout, to confess, to give thanks, to rejoice. 

But those actions are based on who God is, and are in response to what we know to be true about God, and what he has done.  That's why the mind is so important.  It comprehends to some degree the greatness of God, and his goodness.  To leave our minds out in the foyer of the church makes no sense at all.

So the worship of God must make room for both the head and the heart in order to have maximum impact, and to glorify God, instead of merely giving us a worship buzz.  A major problem we face today is that worship has become a synonym for singing.  And if we stop and think about God by reading a portion of scripture, or making a God-focused comment, or praying, that can be seen as disturbing the "flow" of worship, and if often avoided as disruptive to worship. 

I argue that those moments of not singing are opportunities - pit-stops - to fuel the mind with additional information with which we can then turn into even greater praise. 

The worship scripts available to you here are my attempts at engaging the head and the heart around a single focused aspect of God's character.  The songs are placed in a way to help the heart respond to the input that the mind has just received.  The dance is on the page. 

Obviously, you could take the scripts and plug in songs of your choice, song that perhaps your congregation is better acquainted with.  I only suggest that you take the care to fit the song to flow the spirit and subject at hand.  Avoid the tempo criteria (Do we need a fast song here, or a slow one?) and instead let the text alone be the chief reason for choosing a song. 

How should the congregtion respond to the truth they have just been exposed to, and what song might accomplish that the best?