Worship Arts Ministry
Devotional
What is Worship?
by Carla Thompson
Singing isn’t worship, it’s just a song...but when we apply Jesus to the song, it’s worship. Service is just acts of self edification until we serve with Jesus in mind, then it’s worship. It’s the SEEKING of an intimate relationship with Him that recalibrates and transforms all that we do...our very lives into worship.
Why do we sing?
Why do we dance?
Why do we teach?
Why do we serve?
So that we might be known?
No...So that He might be known. Worship is our response to His presence.
It is an overflow of our natural desire to lavish our king with expressions of our love.“Out of the abundance of your heart does your mouth speak.”
How long could you speak on the benefits of nuclear physics. I couldn’t even begin to touch on it because I know nothing about it.
Could that be the very reason why sometimes we can becomes so frustrated and impotent during our corporate times of worship?
If you know nothing about the Lord...If you spend zero time in His word...then from what can you possibly draw from to express your affections. We can go through the motions like macaws... birds that parrot a language but understand nothing of what they speak. We parrot Christianese and sing out “Praise God!”-“Hallelujah!”, but in a very short time we lose our steam because we have exhausted our pool of resources.
Every Sunday...the presence of God fills His house and the shout of the praises of His people rise up...but does this guarantee a victorious life? I don’t think so...I believe that we are to be Contenders For The Glory…Because when Glory comes….so does kingdom breakthrough!
We should seek after the Glory like a deer who pants for the water brook. Worship translates: to kiss toward...when we worship God, we are in His presence blowing our kisses of praise toward Him...but I believe when the Glory of God’s presence is manifested ….that is God kissing back. That manifestation is the ultimate intimacy with God. His presence becomes tangible and like Moses….we revel in it. When Moses was enfolded into the cloud of His presence surely he must have closed his eyes and basked in the fullness of God. His inner man was literally filled with God’s very presence. Every breath he took filled him with God. I think of the song “...this is the air I breath...your holy presence living in me.” Glory is the very breath of heaven...that is why we’ll need no sun… no moon, His Glory will be our atmosphere.
When you capture this thought….do you ever wonder what it would be like to bury your face in the neck of God and breath deep of His scent. Like the one that your husband or wife leaves behind on their pillow...not cologne or perfume, but THEIR scent. There was a story a few years ago that come over the internet about a women who found herself in labor when she was only 5 months along. Her baby boy survived the labor and was in an incubator with every tube and monitor you could think of attached to his very tiny body. When he would cry in distress all she could do was pray for him, though she longed to comfort him in her arm. Because his nervous system was so underdeveloped, the slightest touch was excruciating for him.
So she would sit beside him and pray that the Lord would come and soothe her tiny child. Maybe five years later they were at his older sister’s baseball game. The boy sat in the bleachers coloring. In the distance it was obvious that a storm was approaching. Through the air wafted the scent of rain. Suddenly the boy lifted his head and said…”Mama...can you smell Him?” “Who” she replied? “HIM! “ The boy exclaimed…”you know the one who held me when I was little.” And she remember the prayer she had laid before the throne. Was her child remembering the scent of the Father as he held him during those critical hours? Well I can’t imagine God smelling any better than rain! And you can bet that when I get to heaven you will see me with my nose buried in the crook of the Master’s neck taking a big sniff….Is that you God?
It is just like that in heaven...the angels stand before the Father and suddenly he reveals to them a facet of his character they have never seen and they are prostrate...calling HOLY, HOLY,HOLY….He spins around again...and for all eternity...he could never reveal to them the fullness of who He is. But you have to Be a Contender for the Glory. And that requires deliberate effort...the bible says we are to cast down our vain imagination...it says to buffet our flesh. When we do this...we will not hear ourselves saying things like...I can’t sing...I’m too tired. We will be so desperate to delve into the depths of Him that we will be willing to lay aside our agendas and our preferences and press toward the prize of His Glory.
I challenge you to do a study on the Names of Jesus.
Do a study on the promises for the believer.
Set to memory those names and promises and you will be able to praise the Lord forever because He is infinite in His facets.
You see, somehow along the way we have gotten the idea that worship begins with us...but actually worship is something that we enter into. You see in heaven...Worship is a continual event...all of heaven has worshipped Him since eternity...we simply enter into this worship…
I’ve heard many people express concerns of how boring it will be to stand around in heaven all day and say...HOLY, HOLY, HOLY….Joseph Garlington gives the example of a father who came home from work and was reading the paper in the living room...his small son tried to creep down the stairs to sneak up on his dad...not knowing the creak in the stairs had given his intentions away...waiting till just the right moment the father jerks down the paper and says...BOOO…..the boy run up stairs again...after a few moments the tell-tale creak gives way again...the father waits patiently...soon there was a small voice from the other side of the paper….DO IT AGAIN DADDY!!
Because you see, once the Glory comes into your life….the contending is over...when the Glory of the Lord filled the temple...the priest could no longer stand. Revelation 15: 8 describes the greatest intensity of God’s Revealed Glory: “The temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from His power, and no one was able to enter the temple till the seven plagues of the seven angels were completed .” Bob Sorge says ….”God’s Glory filled the heavenly temple with such intensity that no one– no angel, no elder, no cherub, no living creature, no one—was able to enter THAT Glory. It’s amazing to consider that the holy ones who inhabit the very throne of God and who dwell among the fiery stones are not able to sustain the fullness of God’s Glory when it is fully manifested.”
Yet God is preparing His bride for just such a thing. He prepares the way by making the rough places smooth, the valleys exalted and the mountains made low….that’s not the earth He’s talking about...that’s our hearts. The Glory that awaits God’s Bride is beyond all imagination. The scripture say...No eye has seen, No ear has heard, No mind can conceive all the wonderful things God has prepared for us. Moses didn’t have to wait till the sweet by and by to see this...He just Asked...We do all we know to do, ask and ask, and ask...and yearn and long and even weep...but when God’s Glory shows up….we bow! The Psalmist echoes our hearts cry so well… “Oh, when will You come to me.?” (Ps. 101:2)… Hebrews 3:7