God is Good All The Time. This has been the message of Phils preaches, as well as discussions within lifegroups. Also that the pursuit of Gods presense is a vital part of growing in faith and our relationship with the Lord.
With this said we can often look at others, how they worship, how they react to the Lord presense and we if we don’t understand it, we can often judge it to be “over the top” or “american”! OK so a bit of that is the Britishness in us, but the main reason is because we have developed in our minds, a list of acceptable worship methods and reactions that we feel comfortable with. Should we then see or experience something that is not covered by our list, we are immeadiately uncomfortable with the situation.
The thing is, lots of amazing things happened in the Bible, and our short list of “acceptable” styles of worship does not do it justice! We certainly shouldn’t be boxing the Lord God almighty into a list of expectation and acceptability. God is almighty and cannot be contained, or restrained. He will act how He sees fit, and people will react and worship in different ways.
Looking then at this passage in Samuel, David is really going for it! Without the fear of what others will say or think, David worships the Lord with dancing. Michal looks at this, and perhaps it was a bit of pride, and perhaps also she did not have dancing in her “acceptable” list, but when she sees this she is obviously uncomfortable and she challenges David. His response is as follows (NIV):
22 “I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor.”
David is prepared to dance, to do whatever it is that He feels will glorify the Lord no matter what others think. He is prepared to do even more that what he did. He was certainly not going to confirm to other people expectations, he was also not going to worry about what people thought or said about his actions! He was c oncentrating
on worshiping the Lord and Glorifying Him.
I think therefore we should become “undignified” ourselves. No longer being concerned with looking “normal” or conforming to expectations, but we should let ourselves go and worship the Lord in whatever way we feel is right, and that Glorifies His name. And also, when we see others worshiping, and perhaps their style is something we are not used to, or do not understand, lets not be quick to judge or admonish, but we should remember the day that King David, yes the King of a Great Nation, let his own hair down and worshipped the Lord “David” style!
