What is worship? It is a natural response to a Supernatural God. It is responding to who God is and what He has done.
Is worship really truly worship if we as worshipers aren’t transformed in some way by the act of worship?
True worship occurs when the worshipper has been transformed by an experience with God. Jacob wrestled with God. He walked away limping for the rest of his life. He was transformed from a deceiver to a Prince with God (Gen.32:27-28). Moses was a murderer and wandered in the desert as a shepherd, until he had an encounter with God in the form of a burning bush. He left that place changed, from a shepherd of sheep to God’s shepherd of His people Israel (Exodus 3). Saul, on the road to Damascus, was a persecutor of the church until he met Christ face to face. He was changed from Saul to Paul, a proclaimer of the Gospel of Christ (Acts 9).
I had an encounter with God when I was a teenager. God removed from my heart a life controlling addiction in an instant and my only and natural response was to worship God for who He is and what He had done. He freed me to live a life controlled not by an addiction but by the Holy Spirit.
Worship is not worship if we walk away from an encounter with God unchanged. True worship involves a lifestyle devoted to Christ and a commitment to be different, more like God.
Where has the wonder of worship gone?
It seems more and more people I encounter do not have an awe and wonder about God because they seem to have Him pinned down in their little Theological boxes. They have turned their relationship with God into rules and regulations to follow instead of a living, changing, growing heart relationship with God through His Son Jesus.
Jesus dealt with this even in his day. Matt. 15 tells us of an encounter Jesus had with some Pharisees and teachers of the law. They were mad at him for breaking the traditions of their laws. And Jesus’ response to them was to quote Isaiah’s prophecy about them, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.”
It seems to me that true worship happens when God is pleased with our worship, when He becomes the focus of our worship and not the how’s and why’s of it. There is no wonder in tradition, in rules and regulations. It only offers guilt and bondage. Christ has come to set us free from these in order to worship Him in “spirit and in truth.”
Is worship really truly worship if we as worshipers aren’t transformed in some way by the act of worship?
True worship occurs when the worshipper has been transformed by an experience with God. Jacob wrestled with God. He walked away limping for the rest of his life. He was transformed from a deceiver to a Prince with God (Gen.32:27-28). Moses was a murderer and wandered in the desert as a shepherd, until he had an encounter with God in the form of a burning bush. He left that place changed, from a shepherd of sheep to God’s shepherd of His people Israel (Exodus 3). Saul, on the road to Damascus, was a persecutor of the church until he met Christ face to face. He was changed from Saul to Paul, a proclaimer of the Gospel of Christ (Acts 9).
I had an encounter with God when I was a teenager. God removed from my heart a life controlling addiction in an instant and my only and natural response was to worship God for who He is and what He had done. He freed me to live a life controlled not by an addiction but by the Holy Spirit.
Worship is not worship if we walk away from an encounter with God unchanged. True worship involves a lifestyle devoted to Christ and a commitment to be different, more like God.
Where has the wonder of worship gone?
It seems more and more people I encounter do not have an awe and wonder about God because they seem to have Him pinned down in their little Theological boxes. They have turned their relationship with God into rules and regulations to follow instead of a living, changing, growing heart relationship with God through His Son Jesus.
Jesus dealt with this even in his day. Matt. 15 tells us of an encounter Jesus had with some Pharisees and teachers of the law. They were mad at him for breaking the traditions of their laws. And Jesus’ response to them was to quote Isaiah’s prophecy about them, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.”
It seems to me that true worship happens when God is pleased with our worship, when He becomes the focus of our worship and not the how’s and why’s of it. There is no wonder in tradition, in rules and regulations. It only offers guilt and bondage. Christ has come to set us free from these in order to worship Him in “spirit and in truth.”
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