Why Worship? (Part IV)

It's been way too long since I've posted here. This year has been much busier than I would have preferred. But, I'm posting now. I trust you will find this next piece to be helpful in deepening your worship.

Individual Worship Time

I am concerned that far too many Christians expect the Holy Spirit to speak to them only through their pastor and that they don’t have a relationship with God where they allow Him to speak directly to them.  They either don’t know how, or they have been led to believe that is how the system works.  Many go from church to church, or conference to conference to get a “word from the Lord”, when if they would just stop and spend time alone with the Father—loving Him, thanking Him, adoring Him—they would receive their own revelation of His divine glory and they would indeed receive a word from the Lord.  Thus, I believe it is vital for every believer to have some type of regular time set aside for worshiping God.  This is over and above what we would typically refer to as our “devotional time.”  Simply put, regardless of what we call it, we need this time alone with God for the purpose of Him hearing from us and us hearing from Him.  However, I question how often most believers spend time just worshiping the Father along with their traditional time of reading and prayer.  I believe we can live in His presence every moment of every day—driving in the car, washing dishes, or sitting our desk at work – with a perpetual attitude of worship.  God has allowed us to do that through the death of Christ and by the Holy Spirit.  His presence in our lives is not confined to just our devotional time.  However, we still must dedicate time alone for the specific purpose of entering the holy place and spending time in His presence in worship.  It is vital to our spiritual lives to get away from distraction to have a time of intimacy with the Father.

This opportunity alone with God is when the real work in us begins.  This is the time when the deep spiritual cleansing and purifying that we really need can be accomplished.  Many Christians only worship when they are in a corporate worship setting, one or two days of the week.  This is not enough for our spiritual well-being!  Just as the corporate body of Christ needs to gather regularly to be healthy, each of us needs to gather daily with the Father individually for our personal spiritual health.  We would not eat only on one or two days of the week and expect that we will be in good physical health.  God can, and will deal with us in a corporate worship gathering as we’ll see later.  But those deep areas of our lives, the ones we don’t want to deal with, especially not publicly, require a personal meeting with God.  Without setting aside this personal time for entering the holy of holies, I believe we are not receiving the full benefit of the presence of God as He intended for us to take part.

If worship is not a regular part of your time alone with God, I would encourage you to begin immediately.  Whatever your customary format is, I recommend you begin with worship.  If you are not really an experienced worshiper, use a familiar song or several songs to help you enter into praise and worship.  This may be helpful in creating a habit of private worship time.  If you are more experienced, just begin to express worship straight from your heart without the aid of a particular song.  Start with your own song of praise or thanksgiving and then move to a song of worship and adoration of the Father.  Be spontaneous!  Give Him praise for His excellent greatness.  Thank Him for His blessings on your family, on your job, and for healing and provision.  Then begin to worship and adore Him for who He is—the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Creator and Ruler of all things, the Bright and Morning Star. 

As you move into worship such as this, that is the time to begin listening for the voice of the Spirit.  So often we spend so much time asking God for whatever we need.  But the scripture says He knows what we need before we even ask.  Since this is true, I would submit to you that once you have entered into worship and communion with God, He will speak to your need without you having asked first.  You see, you have called His attention with your praise and worship.  He bends low to hear you honoring Him, talking about Him and glorifying His Son.  Now you can “take care of business” in your life.  The Holy Spirit of God will speak to you! 
“But the Comforter (Counselor, Helper, Intercessor, Advocate, Strengthener, Standby), the Holy Spirit, Whom the Father will send in My name [in My place, to represent Me and act on My behalf], He will teach you all things. And He will cause you to recall (will remind you of, bring to your remembrance) everything I have told you” (John 14:26 Amplified). 
Do you need to be comforted?  Do you need counsel?  What about help?  Maybe you need intercession made on your behalf.  Or, you might need an advocate in a situation where you are being accused by the enemy.  What about strength?  We all need Strength!  You may just need a standby when everything is against you.  We are supposed to imitate Christ.  So if the Holy Spirit is reminding us of the teachings and ways of Jesus, we will know how to imitate Him.

     As the Holy Spirit is now speaking to you and leading you in this personal, set aside time, you will also find Him leading you to scripture. He will reveal scriptures to you in ways you did not previously comprehend. Verses you’ve struggled to understand will be made plain and come alive. Follow the chain of events I have laid out here. You see, we started with worship—enthroning God above all other things. In our worship, we allowed the Holy Spirit to speak and minister to us. Then He led us to pray for all kinds of things and to scriptures to reveal His word to us. What changed? Much less work is involved. Whereas before, we might sit and struggle with what to read and what to pray, the Spirit of God just led us from our worship into prayer and reading the word. How many of us have put forth such great effort with our devotions to keep from being bored, unmotivated, or even falling asleep? How difficult is it to just glorify and adore the One we love? He never intended for us to have to work so hard to get to know Him. Our expressions of affection, our honor toward Him, and our exaltation of Him are the beginning of a deeper knowledge and intimacy with Him.

Why Worship? (Part III)

                                Destination

     Our devoted time of worship should be as if we are taking a trip. With any trip you take, there is a destination. The holy place is our ultimate destination in worship. Thinking in terms of the Tabernacle, we enter His gates with thanksgiving and come into His courts with praise. The old chorus you are probably singing in your head now stops at the inner court, as you know. Unfortunately, that is also where most people stop in their worship. They praise and thank God and glorify His name, but they don’t take the time to commune with the Father. The holy of holies is the place where we have communion with God. We sit at His feet surrounded by His glory. We enthrone Him on our worship. He inhabits the praises of His people! This is where Jehovah God, Creator of heaven and earth, the Ancient of Days, invites us to dwell! He is the reason we live and breathe. Why would we not want to enter into His dwelling place? If given a special invitation to have a private dinner with the President of the United States, what kind of person would go through the main gate of the White House property, enter the doors into the foyer, and then not go into the banquet hall when summoned for the meal but instead decide that the foyer area was as far as he wanted to go? Would that person not be thought of as a fool? Would that not be disrespectful toward the President? Then why should we do that in our worship when it comes to entering through the veil into the holy place? Furthermore, could it be that we are dishonoring God by not fully accepting His invitation?

     The veil of separation between the inner court and the holy of holies was torn when Jesus breathed His last breath on the cross. The Father has enabled us to go in and out of the holy place as we desire. Without going into a full explanation of what each chamber represents in the Tabernacle, the holy of holies is where God’s presence resides. It is all about Him. No flesh or unclean thing is able to stand in the presence of God. In the Old Testament, the priests were not even permitted to sweat while in the holy place. Does this mean that we must be perfect before we enter into the holy place? Absolutely not. We will never be perfect until that day in which we see Him face to face before His throne in heaven. However, He sees beyond our faults.
          “Yet now has [Christ, the Messiah] reconciled [you to God] in the body of His flesh through death, in order to present you holy and faultless and irreproachable in His [the Father's] presence” (Colossians 1:22, Amplified Bible).

     If we are worshiping in spirit and in truth as we ought, then we should be being honest with ourselves and attentive to the Holy Spirit as He reveals to us our flesh. There is a process of cleansing where each time we enter His presence, He will cut away a little more of our flesh. It is our flesh that hinders the will of God from going forward in our lives most of the time. Whether it is sin, disobedience, offense, or apathy, it all comes down to the flesh—our human nature. God will not allow these to coexist with Him. This cutting away is our spiritual surgery to remove the dead human nature so that our spirit may live and thrive in Him. So when we come into the holy place, we must be cleansed and purified by the blood of the Lamb if we desire to be made into His image more and more.

     Now that we have entered into the presence of God, we have been cleansed by dying to our flesh, and we have communed with the Father, now is the time when the dark glass through which we see gets a bit clearer. You see, at this point we are at a place of total surrender to the Father. Our focus is on Him only. Will we see Him face to face in the holy of holies? No. For God told Moses in Exodus 33:20 “You cannot see My face, for no man shall see Me and live.” However, what God makes clearer to us is who He is. He begins to reveal to us more of His attributes. If a distant road sign has been pointed out to you while driving on the highway, you might only see the image of the sign at first without seeing the details or information contained in it. But if you continue driving toward the sign, the words or symbols on the sign become clear to the point that you are able to read and know what it is the sign is telling you. It is similar as we are focused on God in worship. The more we worship in the way I have described, where our destination is the holy place, the closer we come to Him and thus we are able to see more of His attributes. The more of His attributes we see, the greater the revelation we have of His nature. As the revelation of His nature increases in us, so does our knowledge of God and His ways. The more we know of God, the more we have to worship. I believe we spend far too much time laboring in prayer to find God’s will and guidance for our lives. If only we would just sit at His feet and worship Him, we might already know these things because we would know Him and be more familiar with His ways. This is the Father’s ultimate purpose for us—to know Him. He desires to make Himself known to us.

Why Worship? (Part II)

     Having brought to light this true definition of worship in Part I, I wish to address some key points about our own worship in hopes of revealing its importance as well as help give greater clarity and purpose to your own worship habits so that the full benefit is realized and your worship experience is deepened. As you read on, ask the Holy Spirit to open your heart and mind and let him speak to you through what I have written.

                                     Music, Power, Purpose

     A popular form of worship in the Christian community is, of course, worship music. David is probably recognized as the leading worshiper in the Bible. We know that David, in addition to being a king, was a musician, prophet, psalmist, songwriter, and worshiper. He used music as a vehicle for worship, as we can easily see from his writings in the book of Psalms. The tradition of worship set to music has been carried on through the ages, bringing us to where we are today. In the paragraphs that follow I wish for the reader to understand why David was such a passionate worshiper, even to the point of stripping down to his undergarment in public to dance before his God. But we should also take a moment to understand why he so often combined music with his worship. Music is something most every human can relate to. It has the ability to move our emotions from joy to tears or from celebration to anger. David learned this at a very young age. We see in I Samuel, chapter 16, that Saul requested David to come and play his lyre to drive away the evil spirit that was tormenting him. So we know that music also has the ability to affect things in the spiritual realm.

     There are many people in congregations everywhere who would really prefer we “skip all the music and just have the preaching of the Word”, as I’ve heard them say. (Explaining why they feel that way would require a separate chapter altogether, but that is not the purpose of this text.) Perhaps these people simply don’t have an appreciation for music, and that’s okay. As long as a time exists for the purpose of worship, whether or not there is music to accompany it is not quite as important. To be clear however, music and songs are mediums, or tools, of worship. They are not worship in and of themselves. We don’t have to sing songs to be worshiping God. In fact, if we wait until the songs begin on Sunday morning before we worship, then we have missed it completely. However, since the first 20 to 30 minutes of the average church gathering is taken up with worship music, why not receive the full benefit of its purpose? The purpose first and foremost should simply be to worship God. After that, if we understand the power of music, we can impact the heavenlies with a sound of worship that pushes back the spiritual darkness in the atmosphere. The sound of true worship is not a man-made sound. This sound is described in Revelation 19:6 as “the shout of a vast throng, like the boom of many pounding waves, and like the roar of terrific and mighty peals of thunder.” This is what drives away the enemy in the spirit realm. My desire is that we make this kind of sound with our worship as congregations--lifting up one voice of worship unto God rather than just have worship music and sing praise and worship songs.

     As a musician, I play, write, sing, listen to, and enjoy music in many different forms. I certainly enjoy being able to create my own expression of worship through the music I make. I do not wish to change the tradition of opening our gatherings with music. What I would like to change is the tradition of doing it for the sake of tradition. I remember visiting the downtown area of a popular tourist destination where there were many horse-drawn carriages available for hire to take tours of the city. We noticed that each carriage had a Dalmatian sitting in the seat along with the driver. Being curious, we asked one of the drivers the reason all the carriages had this thing in common. He couldn’t accurately answer the question except to say that it was ‘just tradition’. My fear is that this would be the same answer from many church attendees if asked why we sing and have music at the beginning of our gatherings.

     Since most mainstream churches use music in their gatherings, I simply want to lay a proper foundation for how we utilize this time and ensure there is a sound understanding of worship and music and how the two can have a powerful interaction. For a firm foundation, our worship and worship music should serve two primary purposes: 1) That God alone would receive the honor and praise that is due Him; and 2) that the church would fall completely in love with the One we worship, rather than the worship itself. If we’re choosing to sing songs which we call ‘worship songs’, then we should also be choosing to use them according to their purpose, not just because of tradition. If you want to drive a nail, use a hammer; if you want to drive a screw, use a screwdriver. Reversing the use of these tools will achieve nothing but frustration and wasted time. To put it bluntly, so it is with our worship music if we are not using it for the right purpose.

This concludes Part II. Chew on this a while and let it sink in. Ask the Holy Spirit to speak to you concerning it. In Part III, we'll talk about our destination in worship.