The heart of worship

​You cannot separate the gift of the worshipper from the heart of the worshipper. Today we tend to evaluate worship based on the external. You might leave church saying, “Worship was good today!” If I were to ask you why you thought that, you would give me a lot of external answers - the band was good, the lighting was good, I liked the songs. In the same way you might leave church going, “I didn't like worship today,” and you would again give me a bunch of external reasons as to why because we tend to evaluate worship based on the external. We can look and see someone with their hands in the air, an expression on their face that looks like they're in excruciating pain, and tears streaming down their cheeks, and go, “They're really be worshipping.” Maybe, maybe not. In the same way we might look at someone with their hands in their pockets and their lips barely moving and think, “They really need to learn how to worship.” Maybe, maybe not. The problem is that when we evaluate someone else's worship we end up judging their heart. Folks, we can't do that. We don’t know their heart. We should evaluate worship but there’s only one person's worship that we can evaluate effectively and that is our own.