Spiritual Service of Worship

Some weeks back both my wife and I were independently struck with this question part way through our church service, “Why is worship always associated with singing?”  We asked this question because we go to a church that is overly fond of singing, to the point where singing appears to be the only way in which they can really feel that they have worshiped God properly.  You won’t hardly find a formal book-prayer, or a moment of silence, or a prolonged period of introspection anywhere.  What you will find is the usual evangelical formula of song progression that mixes exuberance with solemnity and tries to bring everyone into the presence of God.  I would think it should be the other way around.  Maybe we should first check if God is in the house, then behave accordingly.  Once again I think this attitude stems from the lack of comfort we have in just living our lives as followers of Christ.  We cannot conceive of holiness as anything other than something we do, and so our tithes are not just our freely-given support of the church but the building up of the Kingdom of God (just how much input does He rally have in our annual church or home budgets anyway?), our outreach is always done somewhere "out there" on the mission field, and our worship is always in church and when we sing.  But I read Romans 12 and it says “present yourselves a living and holy sacrifice (sounds church-like to me), acceptable to God (a good thing to do what He wants), which is your spiritual service of worship (there is that troublesome word).”  Somehow that does not sound so much like something we do only on Sunday in a gathering of people accompanied by musical instruments.  It sounds more like day in and day out being a good spouse, an active parent, a faithful employee, a just employer, a man or woman of your word…that Paul says is truly a spiritual service of worship.  Or to summarize the prophet Micah’s take on what an act of worship is that brings us into the presence of God (Micah 6:6-8), it is to always act justly in every situation; to deal with kindness and compassion in every circumstance, and to walk humbly before and with the God who has called us.