I play guitar with the worship team at church. There are several people on this team and they play keyboards, guitars, bass and drums.

Several of us sing. We practice on Wednesday evenings, and we go through what is in the bulletin again on Sunday mornings before the worship service begins.

I used to attend Sunday school and get into discussions with people, but I don't do that anymore, because I find myself so absorbed by what we're doing in the music. After we played last Sunday, I couldn't get this one song out of my head: 'Here I am waiting, abide in me I pray'.

Here I am longing, for You.

Hide me in Your love, bring me to my knees.

May I know Jesus more and more.

Come live in me, all my life, take over.

Come breathe in me, and I will rise, on Eagle's Wings

I play a Fender Stratocaster, and I put a chorus reverb into my strings. I played lead riffs against the piano and bass. Although I've been playing guitar for over 30 years, I've never had so much fun as this. We pray before we practice, and then we devote ourselves to the worship service and try to remain responsive to what God is doing when the music begins.

Do you believe that God can enter into a worship service like that and affect people through the music and the devotion of those playing it? I do.

On Sunday I saw people crying, turning their faces up, with shining eyes, focused on something higher than the music as music. I went to hundreds of concerts and pop festivals when I was younger, and I've seen people do silly things like ignite their lighters in the dark and wave them around, but I had never seen people's souls on fire, being turned by a presence that permeated the room.

I've also seen strangely moving things; once, when I was at a pop festival at Big Sur, on the California coast, three pelicans glided slowly about four feet over the seated audience, flying in formation without flapping their wings, floating on the warm air. The audience sighed collectively and then they broke out in spontaneous applause for those pelicans, but no one broke down and kneeled before them in prayer.

When people are moved within by the beauty and reverence of the music, and when they respond with a "Yes, Lord," then the words and the music, and the singing that brings them together, become worship.

When I was in seminary I had a similar experience. We had about 300 men in chapel on a routine basis, and we'd start off our chapel services with singing old, standard hymns.

Now, in church these hymns did not always inspire much, but when I stood among all those men, all singing out with passion and enthusiasm, my heart did swell. You could almost feel something pick you up and carry you along. Was it just the effect of three hundred men singing? I don't think so. It was the effect of 300 men worshipping.

According to Ralph Martin ('Worship in the Early Church'), the word "worship" means to attribute worth to something. In terms of God, then, we worship when we ascribe supreme value to Him, but does the definition of the word itself mean that we are worshipping something whenever we ascribe any value at all to it?

Am I, for instance, committing idolatry when I get in touch with the fact that I value my guitar? Do I worship my guitar? Is it okay to value my guitar, or my computer, or the things I can do with either of them?

How far can I go with that before I've crossed some kind of line?

Do I worship the people in my life that I love and cherish? Am I committing idolatry if I do that?

If I am, then does the Bible speak against itself by asking people to love one another but to reserve worship for God? This can be a little confusing. How much value and worth placed on something does it take before that becomes worship, and if I'm only supposed to worship God, then do I need to constantly monitor myself to make sure I'm not becoming too earnest or passionate in the way I value people and things in my life that are not God in themselves but that have often been brought into my life by God?

I am a person who appreciates complexity, but I am also a person who likes parsimony.

Perhaps that's why I understand the consequences of the following saying, which answers for me a lot of these questions: "Love God and do what you want."