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Undignified

2nd Samuel 6 : 14 - 6 : 22

Let me start off by saying, Rend Collective officially does NOT support nudity in church.

You may be wondering why a devotional would ever need a disclaimer like this, but the scripture passage we’re looking at today awkwardly centres around a king publicly worshipping in a “linen ephod” which I believe roughly translates to “tighty whities”. (I should maybe mention here that have no formal qualifications in biblical languages).

If you’re feeling slightly uncomfortable right now with the idea that the Bible seems to endorse this as a valid expression of worship, that’s actually kind of the point: true worship takes us beyond our comfort zone.

David was a wild and undignified worshipper - even when he was under social pressure as a public figure to be calm and civilised.

And though we might not be members of the royal family, we still feel the pressure to preserve our dignity. We protect our public personas - that’s what Instagram filters are for, and that’s why it takes some of us half an hour to craft the perfectly worded social media post.

We’re even conscious of how we’re being perceived at church. Depending on your denomination and church culture, you may feel like the the whole congregation is glaring at you when you raise you hands or dance in worship (whether or not that’s actually true).

David certainly knew what it was like to be judged for your style of worship. In one of those passages of scripture that just proves for me that the Bible is real, we get a little window into a quarrel between he and his embarrassed wife, Michal.

She berates her husband for humiliating himself in front of his subjects, for abandoning his pride.

But David makes absolutely no apology.

“I will become even more undignified than this.”

You see, David knows that worship and pride cannot co-exist. The more undignified he becomes in Michal’s eyes, the more beautiful the offering in God’s eyes.

We need to be unapologetic in our pursuit of pride-free worship.

Worship that means something to God always demands something of us - and it very often is our sense of dignity and comfort.

So the next time you find yourself in a worship setting, think about whether or not your pride is holding you back. 

Do you feel your inhibitions rising, holding you back from bringing everything to God?  

Are you more concerned about what others think of you than what God thinks of your worship?

Is there a way that you could step out of your comfort zone a little more, and in the process bring a more beautiful, costly offering of praise?

Dance as David danced and celebrate before the Lord... but probably keep your clothes on!