Worship and Transformation

Tim Keller on the role of worship in transformation:

A Christian, if you looked into the Mirror of Erised [Desire] you would see yourself perfectly enjoying God and if you could have one perfect act of worship in which you perfectly valued Him, in which you perfectly enjoyed Him, if you completely enjoyed Him as He is, you'd be perfect. Nothing would get you down. Nothing would destroy you. You could face anything. But of course, all of our acts of worship are imperfect, and therefore bit by bit by bit, as we worship and as we get better and better at worship, we change where our heart looks. We reassign the ultimate value to the One that will satisfy us if we get Him and forgive us if we fail Him. If you're living for achievement and you fail that god, it'll never forgive you; you'll hate yourself forever. If the thing you are really looking for is love and romance or family, and somehow you fail that god, it will never forgive you; you'll hate yourself forever. This is the only God who's a shepherd. This is the only God — we're the people of His pasture, we're the flock of His hand. He's the one God who forgives you; He's the only God who died for you. So why do we need to worship God? Because we're going to worship something and anything else but the real God will distort our life.…Worship is the ultimate need of your heart. It's the ultimate need of your life.

Listen to the complete message here.

The priority of corporate worship

Reflecting on Revelation 4-5 as a means of instructing the church about the nature of worship, Art Azurdia in his sermon "Bible Ministry" (Part 1) says this:

“In heaven, worship is undeniably corporate in essence. In fact, of all the worship scenes in heaven recorded for us in the Revelation, can you think of one, friends, can you think of just one, that shows the worship of God on the part of any one single individual or angel? Why is this the case? Because public glory brings more glory than private glory. Now please appreciate what I’m saying: I’m not suggesting that the Revelation records for us every possible kind of worship expression. I’m saying that in what it does record, there is nothing done in private, nothing done in secret, nothing done individualistically; all worship is public, corporate, congregational, No soloists singing independent of all the others, only choirs in symphonic praise.

“Now why do I draw this to your attention? My sense of things inclines me to believe that most evangelicals regard the corporate worship of the congregation as more of an aid to their own private worship experience rather than regarding their own private worship experience as an aid to the more important worship of the congregation. Which is why, then, it becomes increasingly easy and convenient to say, ‘Well, I’m going to stay at home this Lord’s day morning, because after all I can worship God all by myself. I can worship God in the garden, thank you very much. I can worship God on the ski slopes.’

“One writer has said it like this,

‘Congregational worship can be enhanced by private worship. However, corporate worship can never be replaced by private worship. Correctly understood, the two are complementary to each other, not unrelated competitors. Each supports, contributes to and draws from the other. But the push of Christian discipleship is always toward fellowship rather than away from it. Authentic worship on the part of an individual inevitably moves that person toward compassionate involvement in a community and conscientious participation in public worship. Within Christianity, congregational worship is primary.’

…We are first and foremost His community of saints. Yet failure to understand this has plagued the church with an evangelical narcissism. So that many of our people esteem their own individual selves are more elevated than the community. Which is why, then, so much of our singing when we gather on the Lord’s Day is in the first person singular — ‘I’ — rather than the first person plural — ‘we.’ We have our services of worship on the Lord’s Day, friends, not to service a bunch of isolated individuals with a privatized worship experience, but to provide the people of God with an opportunity to express their corporate hallelujahs. Individual Christians gather together to be part of the choir because public glory brings more glory than private glory.” [my emphasis]

Those final two sentences are worth reading again (and again) as we prepare our hearts for Sunday morning(s).

Preparing for worship

A few days ago, Oswald Chambers wrote the following in My Utmost for His Highest. It is a fitting reminder and call as we prepare for worship on Sunday. Have I allowed the Spirit of God freedom to examine my heart so that my fellowship with Christ might be true and that the Lord would hear my prayers?

"Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips." Isaiah 6:5

When I get into the presence of God, I do not realize that I am a sinner in an indefinite sense; I realize the concentration of sin in a particular feature of my life. A man will say easily - 'Oh, yes, I know I am a sinner'; but when he gets into the presence of God he cannot get off with that statement. The conviction is concentrated on - I am this, or that, or the other. This is always the sign that a man or woman is in the presence of God. There is never any vague sense of sin, but the concentration of sin in some personal particular. God begins by convicting us of the one thing fixed on in the mind that is prompted by His Spirit; if we will yield to His conviction on that point, He will lead us down to the great disposition of sin underneath. That is the way God always deals with us when we are consciously in His presence.

This experience of the concentration of sin is true in the greatest and the least of saints as well as in the greatest and the least of sinners. When a man is on the first rung of the ladder of experience, he may say - I do not know where I have gone wrong; but the Spirit of God will point out some particular definite thing. The effect of the vision of the holiness of the Lord on Isaiah was to bring home to him that he was a man of unclean lips. "And he laid it upon my mouth, and said Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged." The cleansing fire had to be applied where the sin had been concentrated.