My heart was lifted by a recent article by Pastor John Lancaster who wrote on the theme of worship. He explained that we are in danger of reducing our worship of the Almighty to a time in Church when ‘we sing songs that bless us and have a ‘time of ministry’ when our personal needs are met.’ He explained that worship is an encounter with God quoting William Temple whose description of worship inspires us to hunger for an ever deepening daily encounter with God – ‘to worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind by the truth of God, to purify the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.’
God created us in His own image crafting and shaping us for relationship with Himself and spiritual worship through a daily walk with the Almighty. Because of this nothing else can satisfy the human heart and mind no matter what it is that man turns to seeking to fill the void in his life. Here I refer to the daily walk in life and not a service when we obey His Word by meeting together. That being said, our joining together in worship must go deeper than a particular style of song or an intimate atmosphere created by the modern setting of semi-darkness, lights and smoke. It involves the heart, mind and will of a person being moved by the Holy Spirit and enabled to rise beyond the limitation of the natural to the realm of the glory of God. When our full focus is lifted from the daily cares and routine of life we begin to ‘ascend the hill of the Lord’ through the revelation of the holiness of God himself. I write of an awareness of the glory of God from when we rise to when we sleep. A God consciousness and awareness of His presence that remains with us even when interrupted by the routine and often mundane aspects of life, we can live with a God consciousness in our inner being.
When we do gather together in the house of the Lord our worship should be shaped by praise, thanksgiving and adoration as the Lord reveals His mercy and grace afresh towards us. Very often we limit our meetings to a celebration style of expression which is wonderful and needed, but as we encounter Christ together we must learn to move as it were, through the outer court of His presence, to the inner court allowing ourselves to be led by the Holy Spirit into the most holy place. For this we are totally dependent upon God to lead us for nothing of the flesh can take us here. As we bow, kneel before Him we humbly step into this intimate place becoming conscious of our utter unworthiness and yet through His blood we are able to stand in the glory of who He is and worship in spirit and in truth. Transparent and opened faced we behold the glory as we are transformed through an encounter with the Almighty. It is an extraordinary moment when heaven’s atmosphere invades our world. Every part of our being is moved by the Spirit, therefore it is understandable we are changed from glory to glory. Even though still limited by the restriction of the physical realm we are touched by the manifest presence of the Most High. This is not emotion based or cultivated by human staged programming for it is only made possibly by the drawing of the Holy Spirit. We can only imagine what heaven will be like when we will worship before the very throne of God. A well-known worship song uses the lyric ‘indescribable’, it says it all. O God take us deeper in you.
