What’s the first thing that pops into your mind when you hear the word “worship”?

Probably music.

If I were to invite you over to a “night of worship” at my house, you’d probably expect a couple guitars, some bongos (because I love bongos), and some bad singing. Some of us might be excited. Others, particularly the not-musically-inclined, quail. Singing doesn’t grab everybody.

Which is why it’s a vaguely guilty relief for some, then, to find out that worship and music aren’t the same at all. Worship is much bigger. I’ve consistently been reminded of this vital truth in the evangelical circles in which I’ve flown, and I’m grateful for it.

But what is worship, then?

The answer I most commonly hear is that it is a lifestyle, one that we struggle to maintain. Real worship involves our actions and our obedience; we truly worship not through a one-time experience, but through our daily lives. Hands raised in church are trumped by choices raised in surrender. This is closer to the right answer, I think, and a much more spiritually productive definition than “what we do on Sunday”.

Yet that doesn’t seem to quite nail it down. In Jeremiah 2:23-24, God laments over the Israelites’ idolatry with words that make us squirm: “You are a swift she-camel running here and there, a wild donkey accustomed to the desert, sniffing the wind in her craving — in her heat who can restrain her?” Or Jesus’ sobering words to his disciples: “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money” (Matthew 6:24).

There seems a fierce momentum to worship here, something not to be flipped like a light switch, but resisted like a gale.

A new definition of worship hits like a nor’easter.

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