Horizontal Worship Wars

"...if you are offering your gift at the alter and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to that person; then come and offer your gift." 

Matthew 5:23-24

Often, when we worship, we can really maintain a grasp on the vertical idea of our praise. It is fairly natural for our worship to be vertical and pointing to God. Giving glory and praise to Him. This is rightly justified through the songs that we sing. Typically our "praise and worship" music is geared toward lifting praise to Him, and we celebrate our transformation from old to new, dead to living, and corruptible to incorruptible. In turn, this should transform our way of thinking, living, and love for one another. However, we often forget about the horizontal aspect of worship and Jesus tells us, very clearly, that if we enter a place of worship and have a grudge or something against a brother/sister we should immediately abandon our worship and go and make things right.

 If our vertical worship is aligned with scripture, our horizontal worship will also align. Our worship is the sum of our relationship with Him. Therefore our relationships should reflect His glory through us. Our horizontal relationships are a vital part of our spiritual development. In fact we find in Romans 12:9 - 15:9 instructions on how to maintain and uphold our horizontal relationships. In the book The Great Commission Worshippers, Vernon Whaley and David Wheeler say that we are often content "... to live in a cesspool of anger, resentment, and passive-aggressive behavior when we know someone has done us wrong, misrepresented us, sought to undermine our ministry, or destroy our influence..." However, according to Romans 12, as worshipers we are to be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer (v12).  We are supposed to bless those who persecute us (v14) and not repay evil with evil (v17) - but instead overcome evil with good (v21). We are to be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone (v17) and live at peace with everyone (v18). We are to feed our enemy when he is hungry and give him something to drink when he is thirsty (v20). We are not to be vengeful, but instead leave room for God's wrath, "for it is written: It is mine to avenge; I will repay" (v19).

The bottom line is that getting along with one another is one of the very best ways to give testimony to the fact that we are worshippers. In Romans 13:10 it says, "Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law." Our actions are the fruit of our worship. How we act, what we say, how we say what we say, and how we live what we believe these are all aspects of our worship and our testimony with God. God expects nothing less from us. While we are called to hate evil and cling to good, hating evil doesn't mean that we disregard the person doing evil. Instead we are to love them, seek them out and build a relationship with them.