4-Year-Old Teaches Me What It Means to Worship

Those Pre-K kids have done it again. Taught me something I really and truly did not know. We were sitting there in class and this one particular child, who is prone to asking such questions that make me want to yell, "Help!", stopped me cold by asking, "Well, just what does it MEAN to worship?"

So of course I said, well, it means to honor God through our singing and our praising Him and our coming to church and our bowing before His throne. We show God who He is by our act of worship.

This little girl got a glazed look in her eyes and just sort of shook her head at me and then we went on to eating our animal crackers and so forth and so on. All I could think was, "I've LOST her! Woe is me!"

I went home and looked up the meaning of worship. One definition, from goodnewsarticles.com (David DePra, author) says this about worship:

I beseech you therefore, brethren, because of the mercies of God, that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice, which is holy and acceptable unto God. Such a surrender is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. (Rom 12:1-2)

This passage from Romans not only tells us the nature of true worship, but gives us the results. This is a passage which all Christians ought to meditate upon. It is one of those key Bible passages which should stand front and center in our Christian walk.

Generally speaking, the word "worship" in the Bible is translated from the Greek word, "proskuneo," which means, "to do reverence to." You can see that this Greek word is behind our English word, "prostrate" – in the sense of laying face down (prostrating oneself) and worshipping. There are other words in Greek which are translated, "worship," in the Bible, but "proskuneo" is the most common one.

"To worship," really means, "to be devoted to." It speaks of who I serve with my life – of who governs my life. Worship is more than just praising with words – as sincere as those words might be. It means more than just acknowledging God’s greatness. To worship God means to become devoted to God because of His greatness, and to become governed by His greatness to the point where I LIVE FOR HIM.

There's no way I could have said all THAT to a 4 year old, but this explanation reminded me of something I keep seeing in Cubbies: one little boy, when asked to get ready for prayer, simply throws himself FLAT on his belly on the ground and folds his hands and shuts his eyes.

Mind you, this is probably our most physically active and hard-to-control Cubbie. He comes to AWANAs ready to roll. In fact, one day during free time, he suddenly started hurtling himself, hard, at the walls of the room, over and over -- I stopped him and said, "What are you DOING?" and he replied, "I just feel like I need to bang into the wall."

But I think when he lies down prostrate and folds his chubby little hands and drops his sweaty head onto that dirty carpet, he is readying himself to worship God.

Oh.