AWE! = Authentic Worship Experience!
On at least two levels:
First, “AWE” is an acronym for “Authentic Worship Experience.”
Second, awe is a common and very appropriate expression for our response to God. We feel joy and humility and wonder and even a bit of fear, all at the same time when we are in God’s presence — when we worship. (And, yes, I enjoy puns and word games.)
Worship also refers to our response to God, both individually and corporately as a church. It also refers to our internal, spiritual response as well as our external active response. (Yes, lots of folks worship lots of different things, but we’re focusing on the joyful journey here.)
Authentic is harder to pin down. Genuine, original, real, traditional, factual all show up as definitions, often in contrast to false, copied, phony. And the Bible includes a number of directions for worship, some of which contradict others. For example, Be still and know that I am God, [Psalm 46], but Make a joyful noise to the Lord, [Psalm 100], while you Walk humbly with your God, [Mic 6:8]. In the New Testament we discover that the first followers of Jesus Christ met in the outer courts of the Jewish temple, which doesn’t exist anymore. And we don’t use first century common Greek, or even Latin in most of our churches today.
More recently authentic is being used to describe an experience as real (not made up or imaginary), and true (consistent with the person’s values and character), and meaningful (confirming the person’s worldview).
Jesus gave us not only a model of constantly worshipping the father, he gave us some insight and direction. He did not tell the disciples to believe a list of assertions or to act in a certain or special way toward him. He invited the disciples to follow him. And he told the Samaritan woman it did not matter where she worshipped (which city, which mountain), but that she should worship in spirit and in truth, [John 4:24].
On this page we will be exploring authentic worship as part of our joyful journey.
We expect it to be quite lively.