Our beloved brother, Jim Hawk, went home to be with the Lord yesterday. Jim served in our worship band as a guitarist for some 8 years starting out in our Saturday evening worship services. When He and Linda first joined our church, Jim came to me and said he would like to play the guitar in our worship services. I told him at that time I had a need for a guitarist for Saturday night worship. He laughed and said, "That's no problem. Years ago I played on Saturday nights in honky-tonks all the time. Saturday is fine." He has laughed about the look on my face for years and retold that story to many. He thought it was hilarious.
I have never had anyone in the worship band more faithful that Jim. He was always there, always early, and always prepared. Many times when we were doing some new praise song or "contemporized" hymn arrangement, he figured out the "new, strange" chords and shared with the other guys. He loved the fellowship with the band and loved playing to support the worship of the people. Jim's service was worship which is totally Biblical, especially as seen in Romans 12:1. We see in this passage, as many theologians have understood, that the "presenting of one's body as a living sacrifice" is becoming "wholly God's property". This "self-surrender" is something that we all should continually repeat in our experiences with Him.
The implication is that true worship which God desires embraces the whole of the Christian's life from day to day; otherwise our gathering for "worship" would be false and unacceptable to God. The corporate sense of worship is not rejected here, but balance is given to worship. Our gathered worship, or corporate worship in the narrower sense, is practiced as part of our wider worship that embraces the whole of Christian living in obedience. It is the worship of the faithful and so describes Jim Hawk in his service of worship. L. Perry in Getting the Church on Target says, "Worship functions for the glory of God and the sanctification of man." Thus worship is never ending. God has called us to worship Him...and worship Him throughout all eternity we will. Jim has gotten the jump on us. We will long remember his service of worship and one day we will worship with him again. mjm
