Sunday, November 20, 2011

A Saturday Kind of Worship

If you know me at all, you know that I'm a huge college football fan. I think my favorite day of the year besides Christmas is opening day of NCAA football. I love getting up to watch College GameDay, I love the rivalries, I love the pride and passion of football traditions... I just love everything about it. During the time we lived in Tennessee, and the years my sister Stephanie was at the University of Tennessee, I became a giant Volunteers fan. There's just nothing more awesome than 100,000+ people in bright orange, roaring around you as you hear "It's football time in Tennessee!"... and the Power T opens up, Rocky Top starts playing, and the Vols come running out of the tunnel. I mean I literally have chills just writing about it right now. It's awesome.

My little sister Sydney now goes to Texas A&M, which, as you probably know, is known for being a very tradition rich school. So about a month ago, Stephanie and I went to College Station to see our first Aggie football game. I knew it was supposedly a really cool environment to see a football game in, I'd seen Kyle Field on TV plenty of times, with the Corp and all of its traditions, waving the white towels and all that... but nothing I had seen on TV or heard about from people who'd been there before could have done justice to what I got to experience in that stadium. To see like 90,000 people, arms around one another, singing in unison and swaying back and forth... I don't care who "your team" is, that is hands down one of the coolest things I've ever gotten to see in person. I promise it will make every hair on your body stand straight up. It's incredible. Stephanie and I just looked at each other and said, "Yeah... that was awesome."

So then I started thinking, why is this such a powerful thing? What is it about people, unified by a common love or passion, that can make the hair on the back of your neck stand up, give you goose bumps and even put tears in your eyes? What is it within us that wires us to feel that way?

It's worship.

The definition of worship is "a feeling or expression of reverence and adoration."

And if God put inside of us the desire to have that feeling of unity and power for one greater good — which we use on Saturdays to cheer on our team — what kind of power would it have if we really used it for what it's intended for?

I wonder what Sunday mornings would look like if we worshipped with the same passion and unity then as we do on Saturday afternoon. I wonder what our communities would look like if we lived a lifestyle of worship that was as unified and passionate as a stadium full of football fans. I wonder what our nation would look like.

I just can't imagine that God gave us those feelings just so we could use them for ourselves. Because believe me, I believe one hundred percent that the joy I get from college football is from the Lord... seriously! But how much more powerful would that joy be if we used it to glorify HIM as much as we do to glorify the earthly things we love... like our favorite team. Or whatever else it is that you're so passionate about.

Just something that's been on my heart lately...

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