Rē-ˈset (verb) – 1. to move back into an original place or position | 2. to put back in the correct position for healing | 3. to restore

God tells Jeremiah to go to the potter’s house so that he can receive a message. After watching the potter form a lump of clay, the message Jeremiah receives is this: “Like clay in the hand of the potter—so you are in My hand.”

God’s dream for us is that we would be shaped by His hand. One of the places where this shaping happens is when we worship.

When we reduce discussions about worship forms to simply matters of style, we miss a crucial aspect of corporate worship: worship forms us. Worship is not simply a matter of our preference, it is also about God’s preference. It is both expressive and formative.

At our core, we are defined by what we worship because we worship the things that we love. We engage practices that demonstrate what we love and these practices shape us. So the shaping is like a two-way street. The way we worship becomes the way we believe and the way we believe shapes the way we worship.

Some people hold onto worship traditions simply because they like them. Others ditch all tradition because they don’t like them. Both options miss the point—worship is not about what we like or don’t like, it is about God’s desire to shape us.

A great question to ask is: How does our worship practice shape us? Which worship practices are most like being shaped by the potter’s hand?

Our goal for worship at Cedar Hills is to be God-centered, Bible-based, Gospel-declaring, and Body-building. That means that our music, prayers, and preaching must remain Christ-centered. When our worship is built around the gospel, this will shape us.

We need to reset our worship so that it is not reduced to an expressive activity where the most important feature is our sincerity. We need to reset our worship so that it is a formative, God-oriented practice that shapes and reshapes our lives. We are clay in the potter’s hand.

Kent Landhuis
Pastor of Teaching and Leadership