Worship is a conversation. Actually, worship is multiple conversations happening all at once. Did you know that when we come together to worship on Sundays, we are actually entering into a series of dialogues between God, ourselves, and other believers?

Corporate worship is that time each week when we as believers in God come together to worship Him. The idea of corporate worship was instituted by God thousands of years ago for the children of Israel. At that time, there were two primary elements of corporate worship. A revelation from God, and a response to Him. Today, we as worshipers are called to engage in this same conversation with God. God reveals Himself to us, and we respond to Him. 

How does this process work in our church? Well, God speaks to us through songs that reveal His character and nature, and through the preaching of His Word. This is why each and every Sunday, we sing two or three songs that simply proclaim who God is and what He has done. For example, this past Sunday, we sang the song “Forever,” which is a scripture song from Psalms about the enduring nature of God’s love. God reveals Himself to us as we sing songs about Him.

But it isn’t enough to simply observe God’s revelation. When God reveals Himself to us, we are drawn to respond. For this reason, we usually sing two or three songs each week that are “response” songs. Again, taking last week as an example, I wanted us to sing a couple of songs responding to the truth of God’s enduring love. We sang “My Jesus, I Love Thee” as a response to God’s love because scripture says that we love him because He first loved us. We followed that with “Speak, O Lord,” because Jesus said that those who love Him keep his commandments.

My prayer for Oak View is that each believer who attends worship each week would engage in this sacred conversation between God and us as worshipers. Satan abhors this conversation, and seeks to distract us through any means possible. My prayer is that we would all rededicate ourselves to listening for God’s revealed truth in worship and to responding to Him in worship, adoration, and dedication.   - John Cornish