Having spent my life growing up in church, I like many, viewed worship as an event that took place on Sunday mornings, Wednesday nights, and various revival events and conferences. I saw it as a time to sing and ask God for help as well as giving him thanks for the blessings in our lives. I didn’t really understand worship going beyond those instances until I took the time to get into God’s Word and really look at what is said about worship.

Paul’s letter to the Romans has been a great eye opener for how we as Christians should view worship, particularly chapter 12 verse 1. Paul states : “Therefore, I urge you, brother, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to god-this is your spiritual act of worship. Upon studying this scripture I understood that true worship is a way of life, not an event. True worship comes daily with our living for Christ through prayer, reading His Word, and loving others. This thought totally blew my thoughts on worship out of the water and really enhanced my worshiping experiences not only as a worshiper, but also as a worship leader.

Listening to worship leader John Wimber also threw me for a loop. His perspective on corporate worship is that it isn’t for us, it’s for God. We often think our corporate worship is for us to be “refreshed” or “recharged” or just to ask God for help on various topics. In reality, our worship should revolve around our giving God thanks and praise for all he does in our daily lives. We bring something from our hearts to him in return for what he has done for us. It’s a beautiful thing when corporate worship is truly about giving God praise and not about getting something from God. The beauty in all of it is that when we bring our hearts for God in total surrender, He in turn gives us the things we are looking for. He does not give those things because we are giving ourselves to Him, in fact he gives us those things because He is gracious and merciful which is a very beautiful thing to experience.

The idea and prayer behind LOUD has been on my heart for years and it is an answer to prayers that Josh has been given the same heart to see young adults and college students worship together without affiliations or groups. The opportunity and need for this is great, yet very few can cause it to come to fruition. I am excited for what God can do when so many young people come together to give praise to God and what type of life changing experiences he can bring through such a gathering each month. My prayer is that God will be pleased with what is brought to Him and that those worshiping will see what an incredible and amazing God we are given the opportunity to serve.

Few people really value the opportunity to get together with other believers in order to glorify God.  We take advantage of those opportunities.  We see them as an obligation to go to church or an obligation to fulfill some sort of moral agenda in our own lives.  The truth is, the understanding of worshipping together is rarely understood.  However, for hundreds of years this has been the idea for worshipping Christ.  

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When you take the time to think to yourself how great our God really is, you’ll quickly find that He exceeds the limits of our mind’s ability to really comprehend His person.  God is unbelievably great.  Look around you!  The billions of stars and galaxies that we have only scratched the surface in seeing with a telescope, the majesty of mountains, sunrises and sunsets.  All of these things are a part of an eloquent picture painted by God in order to tell us about how great He is.  

Thus, because God is great, He is worthy of a great response or a great praise.  David says in Psalm 96:4, “Great is the Lord and Greatly to be Praised.”  Sometimes we forget that God is announcing His greatness all around us, and our response to Him is to give him a great response back.  Our hopes is that on February 26th, you will join the Red Room in making God’s name loud right here in the tri cities.  We hope that you will join us as we desire to respond to God’s greatness with an enormously loud praise.  

Please be praying over this gathering because we hope that lives will be touched as they see our God’s great name lifted high.