The Pleasure Of Worship
Posted by jerrywhite on Aug 23, 2010
“We evangelicals do not know much about worship. Evangelism is our specialty, not worship. We have little sense of the greatness of Almighty God. We tend to be cocky, flippant, and proud. And our worship services are often ill-prepared, slovenly, mechanical, perfunctory, and dull…. Much of our public worship is ritual without reality, form without power, religion without God.”
John Stott, quoted by Oswald Sanders
Enjoying Intimacy With God, 20
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“The blessed and inviting truth is that God is the most winsome of all beings, and in our worship of Him we should find unspeakable pleasure.
The living God has been willing to reveal Himself to our seeking hearts. He would have us know and understand that He is all love and that those who trust Him need never know anything but that love.
God would have us know that He is just, indeed, and He will not condone sin. He has tried to make it overwhelmingly plain to us that through the blood of the everlasting covenant He is able to act toward us exactly as if we had never sinned.
Unbeknown to the understanding of a Pharisee, God communes with His redeemed ones in an easy, uninhibited fellowship that is restful and healing to the soul.
The God who has redeemed us in love, through the merits of the Eternal Son, is not unreasonable. He is not selfish. Neither is He temperamental. What He is today we shall find Him tomorrow and the next day and next year.”
A. W. Tozer
Whatever Happened to Worship? 28-29
Compiled and Edited by Gerald B. Smith
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The twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever.
Revelation 4:10 (ESV)
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Awesome, Beautiful Worship
Posted by jerrywhite on Aug 4, 2010
“What are we going to do about this awesome, beautiful worship that God calls for? I would rather worship God than do any other thing I know of in all this wide world.
I would not even attempt to tell you how many hymnbooks are piled up in my study. I cannot sing a lick, but that is nobody’s business. God thinks I am an opera star.
God listens while I sing to Him the old French hymns in translation, the old Latin hymns in translation. God listens while I sing the old Greek hymns from the Eastern church as well as the beautiful psalms done in meter and some of the simpler songs of Watts and Wesley and the rest.
I mean it when I say that I would rather worship God than to do anything else. You may reply, ‘If you worship God you do nothing else.’ But that only reveals that you have not done your homework. The beautiful part of worship is that it prepares you and enables you to zero in on the important things that must be done for God.
Listen to me! Practically every great deed done in the church of Christ all the way back to the apostle Paul was done by people blazing with the radiant worship of their God.
A survey of church history will prove that it was those who were the yearning worshipers who also became the great workers. Those great saints whose hymns we so tenderly sing were active in their faith to the point that we must wonder how they ever did it all.
The great hospitals have grown out of the hearts of worshiping men. The mental institutions grew out of the hearts of worshiping and compassionate men and women. We should say, too, that wherever the church has come out of her lethargy, rising from her sleep and into the tides of revival and spiritual renewal, always the worshipers were back of it.”
A. W. Tozer
Whatever Happened To Worship?, 18-19
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This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.
Matthew 15:8 (ESV)
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A heart near the Lord Jesus cannot help but worship Him out of the overflow of wonder.
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The Humble One Exalted
Posted by jerrywhite on Dec 17, 2009
“See the different state of Christ on earth and in heaven. Oh how is the scene altered!
When he was on earth, he lay in a manger; now he sits on a throne.
Then he was hated and scorned of men; now he is adored by angels.
Then his name was reproached; now ‘God hath given him a name above every name.’
Then he came in the form of a servant, and as a servant, stood with his basin and towel, and washed his disciples’ feet; now he is clad in his princes’ robe, and kings of the earth cast their crowns before him.
On earth he was a man of sorrows; now he is anointed with the oil of gladness.
On earth was his crucifixion; now his coronation.
Then his Father frowned upon him in desertion; now he has set him at His right hand.
Before, he seemed to have no form or beauty in him; now he is in the brightness of his Father’s glory.
Oh what a change is here! ‘Him hath God highly exalted.’
Thomas Watson
Body of Divinity
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And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:8-11 (ESV)
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Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory, and honor and power.
Revelation 4:11, ESV
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Failure To Worship
Posted by jerrywhite on Nov 12, 2009
“Man was made to worship God. God gave to man a harp and said, ‘Here above all the creatures that I have made and created I have given you the largest harp. I put more strings on your instrument and I have given you a wider range than I have given to any other creature. You can worship Me in a manner that no other creature can.’ And when he sinned man took that instrument and threw it down in the mud and there it has lain for centuries, rusted, broken, unstrung; and man, instead of playing a harp like the angels and seeking to worship God in all of his activities, is ego-centered and turns in on himself and sulks and swears and laughs and sings, but it’s all without joy and without worship….I say that the greatest tragedy in the world today is that God has made man in His image and made him to worship Him, made him to play the harp of worship before the face of God day and night, but he has failed God and dropped the harp. It lies voiceless at His feet.”
A. W. Tozer
Worship, The Missing Jewel of the Evangelical Church, 11-13
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But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.
John 4:23 (ESV)
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Where is your harp? Is it thrown down because you hold other things in your hands that distract you from worship? Or are you delighting your Heavenly Father with the activity He seeks from all His creatures? If we were made to worship—if the Father seeks such people to worship him—if worship is the central activity of heaven—then worship is the deepest and most satisfying activity we can engage in day by day. Through worship in spirit and truth the heart of man touches the heart of the Father.
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Privilege Of Present Realization
Posted by jerrywhite on Jul 6, 2009
“This Flame of the Presence was the beating heart of the Levitical order. Without it all the appointments of the tabernacle were characters of some unknown language; they had no meaning for Israel or us. The greatest fact of the tabernacle was that Jehovah was there; a Presence was waiting within the veil. Similarly the Presence of God is the central fact of Christianity. At the heart of the Christian message is God himself waiting for His redeemed children to push into conscious awareness of his Presence. That type of Christianity which happens now to be the vogue knows this Presence only in theory. It fails to stress the Christian’s privilege of present realization. According to its teachings we are in the Presence of God positionally, and nothing is said about the need to experience that Presence actually. The firey urge that drove men like McCheyne is wholly missing. And the present generation of Christians measures itself by this imperfect rule. Ignoble contentment takes the place of burning zeal. We are satisfied to rest in our judicial possessions and for the most part we bother ourselves very little about the absence of personal experience.”
A. W. Tozer
The Pursuit of God, p. 37
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The Lord’s conscious presence does what nothing else can do. His presence brings refreshment, healing, rest, renewal, quickening, new vision, strengthened faith, hope and love, and the list could go on. His revealed presence is far, far more than a good Bible study, or an excellent sermon, or a stirring praise service. His conscious presence can enter during those times, but sometimes His presence quietly comes without those activities. You can press into His presence while alone in your prayer place, and He will melt your heart with His love and stun you with the awe of His beauty. Words seem most feeble in those times. The sweetness of His nearness fills your spiritual senses with what cannot be described, and everything of this world fades into the shadows with His nearness.
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