During one of this fall's "Fifth Quarter" events, the band I'm in was the entertainment for the night. We finished playing all of our original songs and we wanted to play some worship songs. I desired to explain what worship was for those in the crowd who had, perhaps, never heard of such a concept. And so there I stood, before a bunch of my peers waiting for the words to come out of my mouth. What is worship?

Matthew in his gospel tells the story of a woman who enters the presence of Jesus as he dines with Simon the Leper. I can imagine her excited, yet anxious, as she emerges from the shadows and approaches the guest of honor. Emotion welling up inside of her, she opens her bottle of perfume and begins to anoint her Lord. The response is immediate. What a waste! All of that money could have been saved and given to the poor. Surely helping the poor was the right way to serve, to worship. Jesus' response is simple and moving: "She has done a beautiful thing to me." (Matthew 26:6-10)

Jesus saw something in this woman that nobody else took the time to consider. He looked past all personal opinions and saw her heart. He saw that this woman was overjoyed to have the privilege to simply express her love for her Savior. This was her way of giving her sacrifice to the Lord.

Her sacrifice was not the money saved to buy the expensive perfume but rather her heart's cry of love. Psalm 51:16-17 is a similar cry to God: "You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart."

I often struggle with what God wants from me. What can I possibly give to one so far above even my own understanding? But the Lord responds and says that he wants a sincere heart, a humble heart. All of my attempts to bring a worthy gift to God will fail. He desires that I sing to Him with a broken spirit and a broken heart, fully submitting to the acknowledgement that He is above all that I can ever offer or perfect.

The woman with the perfume loved Jesus and desired to express that love with a humble heart. Worship is our response to His majesty in our lives and beyond our existence. It is a song, it is a prayer, it is a conversation, it is how we live our lives as an expression of our heart. We worship in spirit and in truth.

When we come to church, it does not matter what songs are played, who plays them, what style the songs are, what instruments are played, or anything else. If our hearts are behind our songs and we desire to bring Him glory, then who are we to differentiate between the "right" and "wrong" ways to sing?

We all have our own preferences and opinions about how worship should be and what it should sound like. But let us not forget, worship was never the sound or the style, it was the heart. It is the heart of our songs.

Just because I enjoy a couple electric guitars thrown into the mix, doesn't mean I cannot appreciate and do not love the beauty of choral, brass, strings, and ethnic styles of worship that bring glory to God. I don't believe that God hears a difference between an electric guitar and a cello. He hears our hearts.

Back in September when I found myself on stage trying to explain worship to kids who had never been in a church, I told them that worship was our way of coming before God in song and in deed to simply give Him glory. This is the heart of worship, no matter what the style or sound.