"God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth"
John 4:24
as a younger believer, i found worship to be largely based on my emotions. and we all know that emotions waver so easily. with my motivation and desire to worship based on fleeting emotions, my worship to the Lord also was fleeting - here today and gone tomorrow.
But the Lord is not fleeting.
the truth of who he is, what he is like and what he's capable of, the truth of what he's done and will do in the future is not fleeting.. and Jesus calls us to worship the Lord in these truths.
in implementing this lesson, i have discovered that worship demands a huge chunk of mental activity.. say that the praise team leads the congregation into worship with the song "nothing but the blood" by matt redman. as you sing the first line of the chorus, "what can wash away our sins?" you recall that God is Holy and does not tolerate sin.. you remember how God commanded the Israelites to make sacrifice for their sins through the killing of animals. you remember that God was very specific in describing what kind of animals were fit to be offered to the Lord..the animal had to be flawless.. then you remember that the animal sacrifices were only temporary atonements, and that the Law and the Prophets all pointed to the ultimate and final sacrifice, Jesus. You remember how Jesus, who being in very nature God, humbled himself and came to earth as a human to become that perfect, flawless, ultimate sacrifice. Then, you recall that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God..except Jesus. and then, you realize that indeed, only the blood of Jesus was enough to wash away our sins.. then you remember the agony that Jesus went through in order to wash away our sins..
..and you sing, "What can wash away our sins? What can make us whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus!"
..and perhaps you lift your hand in worship, awestruck at how your Creator loved you to His death - but not to remain in it, but to defeat it and rise victoriously from it.
as i began worshipping Him in His truths, worship had become a much more powerful and consistent experience for me than the days when worship was based on my emotions..
i am truly thankful to God for revealing himself to me.. but i do feel pity for those who seem so disengaged during worship(not in a derogatory way).. and i wonder, if the knew the truths of God as revealed through the Scripture(Which is unchangeable), could they really stay so aloof and disengaged during times of worship?
I think not.
my prayer is that more and more believers will learn continuously the truths of God through scripture and dive into a deeper level of worship as God reveals himself to them.
