My childhood was spent in two churches, a Methodist church in a West Virginia mining camp, and a Free Will Baptist Church in rural Alabama. I suppose both were fairly tame affairs, with nothing unusual for the most part. No snake handling, no miracles of healing, no one raised from the dead...

But I wish you could have seen "Miss Minnie" Knight worship. She danced all over the Baptist church. This diminutive octogenarian who normally sat through worship services without a word, but whose smile and sweet spirit radiated Christ, would thrust her hands heavenward and begin a little shuffle that carried her all over the church, up and down aisles. During this time, people were praying or singing. When the praying and singing ceased, Miss Minnie sat down too.

As children, we probably thought it was a little bizarre. But I cannot ever remember any person making a single unkind or negative comment about Miss Minnie's manner of worship. That was how she did it, and she was one of the most wonderful people any of us knew, and that was the end of it.

6. There's so much we don't know about worship, so leave room in your philosophy for change and growth.

Paul said, "We see through a glass darkly" (I Corinthians 13:12) and "We do not know how to pray as we should" (Romans 8:26). No argument there.

I think we can add another thing to that. We do not worship as we should. In fact, we are probably all kindergarteners in the school of worship.

But one day, we will worship God in the way he intends and our spirits yearn for.

I have walked down Richmond, Virginia's Monument Avenue in the fall of the year when the leaves of the huge maples were in their full glory, displaying brilliant oranges, reds, and purples, and almost wept. My senses were so overwhelmed, my mind soaring, and my poor soul trying to drink in all I was seeing, but it wasn't working.

All that beauty was on the outside and no matter how I tried, I could not take it in. I might as well have been looking at a picture of it in a book. I felt so frustrated.

Who has not felt that way when listening to uplifting music? Your soul soars and your spirit expands, and you feel so helpless.

I have felt that only a few times in sermons, but I have known it. There were times when E. V. Hill preached that I wanted to stand on a pew and shout to the top of my lungs. My inner self was about to explode.

That's when I have envied the Pentecostals. It appears--I do not know this--that some of them know how to enter into that kind of worship, to fully savor that experience.

But I shall. One day. God grant.

"Dear children, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is" (I John 3:2).

Until then, when we come to worship, do the best you can.

7. Finally, whatever you believe to be the best way to worship, cut the other fellow some slack. Not everyone will want to do it your way.

The other fellow is worshiping the best he can, in a manner that expresses what he's feeling.

Peter was growing uncomfortable. The Lord had been telling him how things would be for him in the future, and much of it sounded awful. So, like a disciplined child seeking to turn the attention to a sibling, Peter points out John and says, "And Lord, what about him?"

Jesus spared nothing, but said, "What is that to you? You follow me" (John 21:21-22).

Lord, what about how this guy worships, what he wears, what they use, what they're not doing?

What is it to you? Follow Jesus.

When the man born lame was healed in Acts 3, he showed his joy by leaping and jumping and praising.

When a woman was forgiven of her great sin, she showed her strong devotion by bathing Jesus' feet in her tears and drying them with her hair (Luke 7).

We should be cautious about sitting in judgment over the way other people worship.

After all, "who are you to be sitting in judgment on someone else's servant? To his own master, he stands or falls" (Romans 14:4).

How do you worship the Lord?

Oh? Well, if it's alright by the Lord, I'm cool by it.

Dr. Joe McKeever is a Preacher, Cartoonist, and the Director of Missions for the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans. Visit him at joemckeever.com/mt. Used with permission. 

Original publication date: December 2, 2009