Posted by
Scott Ptak on Thursday, February 08, 2007 3:03:00 PM
How long has it been since you worshipped God? No, I didn’t ask you when you last went to church, but when you last truly worshipped? Many go to church. Few go to worship.
Worship is the greatest privilege a child of God has. It is the created acknowledging the Creator. Worship is celebrating our life in the body of Christ. It is receiving God’s love, thanking Him for His provisions, and being in awe of His mighty power. Worship cannot be mandated by man. It must come out of a personal, growing relationship with God. It is the true and first expression of a love relationship.
One of the better-known evangelical preachers of our time is John Piper. He says this about worship: “The fuel of worship is the true vision of the greatness of God; the fire that makes the fuel burn white-hot is the quickening of the Holy Spirit; the furnace made alive and warm by the flame of truth is our renewed spirit; the resulting heat of our affections is powerful worship.”
If worship is so critical in the life of a believer, logic would dictate that it is equally important when those believers gather together as a corporate body on Sunday. If this is the case, and in my opinion it is, why are there so many dead churches on Sunday morning that have never experienced true worship?
Billy Graham estimates the 60 percent of the members of most local churches have never had a life-changing encounter with Jesus – they are spiritually dead. Of the 40 percent who are believers, it is probably safe to assume that half are carnal Christians, which leaves only 20 percent of the church who are maintaining a fresh, vital relationship with God. This scenario is rather bleak, but it portrays a valid representation of the challenge that the typical church faces when it attempts to enter into a time of worship.
When Jesus was asked to prioritize all the commandments, without hesitation He replied: The foremost is, ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.”
The first priority of the church must be God. Any other answer would be idolatrous, because idolatry is simply setting anyone or anything before or above God. Therefore, our programs, designed to promote the Kingdom, must not take precedence of the King.
Dr. Don McMinn, an author of many books on praise and worship, says this in his book, “The Practice of Praise”: “There are 80 billion dollars worth of church buildings in America. That represents a lot of square footage devoted to worship; and yet, on a typical Sunday morning, how much worship actually transpires?” McMinn continues, “Regardless of what our individual concept of worship is, many of us would ruefully admit that it is all too often ostensibly missing from our worship services.”
Gordon Dahl once observed, “Our problem is that we worship our work, work at our play, and play at our worship.”
A.W. Tozer says that “worship is the missing jewel of the evangelical church.”
All however is not completely bleak. I believe God is changing the hearts of His people, and that He is restoring worship in His church. The body of Christ is beginning to experience another reformation – a reformation of worship, and it could be just as significant as Luther’s campaign. We are discovering that God desires it, it is good for us, the devil hates it, and it is biblical.
Since this column appears in your newspaper on Saturday, why don’t you take the remainder of today to begin preparing for the worship service tomorrow? Seek Him in prayer. Confess your sins before Him. Anticipate His presence and His glory. Focus only on Him. Then, and only then, will “the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.”
Copyright 2008 Scott Ptak