Hands are lifted high like trees reaching to the skies. Voices are raised in a harmonious symphony. Hearts are being woven together by an unseen thread. Minds are centered with a single focus. Believers are joined together with one ambition for one reason in one God. The audience is the great One: Our Father, His Son and The Holy Spirit. This event is an intricate melody; a dialogue of adoration between children and Father; between creation and Creator.
What an awesome picture for those who experience worship! The Holy Spirit is moving, beckoning, drawing. The Intercessor is going before – leading to the Father who yearns to know and who yearns to be known in return. This Father desires praise, craves love, and longs for relationship. All are invited to come the place where they may bow at His feet in awe and reverence; God’s people longing for a manifest presence of the Lord. Enter His Throne Room. Enter His presence.
For Believers, this is the apex of the week! The time gathered together as a Body to corporately exclaim praise for God and pour out love on Him. This is also the place where hearts are softened and ears become attentive; where minds are made void of the every day bustle of life; where personal agendas are no longer important. Rather, people are brought to the place where they can hear God. God is the center of this moment! It is all about Him!
Worship Services can include different elements of worship. For example, singing songs of praise, reading the Holy Scriptures, giving tithes and offerings, praying, hearing the message, and partaking of the Lord’s Supper are all examples of worship that may occur during a Service. Each element gives the worshipper an opportunity to commune with God by giving to Him and receiving from Him. Singing songs of praise allows the worshipper to speak to God through song while tithing and giving an offering is returning to the Lord from what He has provided. In reading scriptures and hearing the message, worshippers can hear from God His heart’s desires for their lives and for the lives of those whom Believers are called to minister to.
Worship should be alive, but that does not always mean worship has to be lively. There is a time for worship that is expressive. People should not be coerced or forced into participating in worship. Worship should come from the heart. God seeks worshippers who worship in spirit and in truth, which can quite often come from a heart that is quiet and contemplative before Him. What God wants is a heart that has surrendered to the will of the Father and given Him a home.
Worship is an act of surrender. It is the response that arises from the revelation and recognition of God’s worth-ship and the reality of His presence in the life of the Believer. Christ speaks to the heart of worship in the Gospel of John. “Yet a time is coming and is now, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for these are who the Father seeks. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:23-24, NIV)
To worship God “in spirit” is to worship Him with His life-breathed breath (pneuma). Only those who have received the breath of salvation can worship God. To worship God “in truth” is to worship Him without barriers or falsehoods; worship that is absent of any hypocrisy and deception. Only those who have an experiential knowledge of God can worship Him.
God is not concerned with the how’s and where’s of worship. God wants our lives to worship Him as we echo His love to the world. “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” (2 Cor. 3:18) God wants His people to be so enamored with Him for His out pouring of love for that they in turn offer surrendered lives back to Him as living sacrifices to be living witnesses to the world. (Romans 12:1) The life that loves God offers itself back to Him as a reasonable act of worship.
So what does a life that worships God look like? A life that worships God does not just emulate His attributes. Rather a life that worships God begins to take on characteristics of godliness. That life abides in His faithfulness. In order to abide in the love of God, one must first invite His presence to indwell his or her life, and then seek to walk with God in all circumstances. (John 15:4) God’s presence and power will then become more and more evident through the actions of the individual and the “fruit” that person bears as he or she willingly lives by the commandments of God. (John 15:6) That person will begin to exhibit aspects of Christ-likeness like gentleness, meekness, self control, forgiveness and kindness. (Galatians 5:22)
There is no better place than being in God’s presence and encountering his Being. And there is no better life than one which allows God’s presence and Being to indwell. That is what God desires – to indwell the hearts and minds of his creation. That is a life that worships God.
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