I don't know about you guys, but recently I had one of those days when I was really needing some encouragement and finding it difficult to simply ENJOY and have my time with Abba rather than see it as (sadly) one more thing to do in the day. So, I offer you a few more thoughts on worship from Celebration of Discipline (by Richard Foster). May your day be brighter and you be spurred on to good works!
- Amanda Kay Johnson
Many times you will not "feel" like worship. Perhaps you have had so many disappointing experiences in the past that you think it is hardly worth it. There is such a low sense of the power of God. Few people are adequately prepared. But you need to go anyway. You need to offer a sacrifice of worship. You need to be with the people of God and say, "These are my people. As stiff-necked and hard-hearted and sinful as we may be, together we come to God." Many times I do not feel like worshiping and I have to kneel down and say, "Lord, I don't feel like worshiping, but I desire to give you this time. It belongs to you. I will waste this time for you."
Isaac Pennington says that when people are gathered for genuine worship, "They are like a heap of fresh and burning coals warming one another as a great strength and freshness and vigor of life flows into all." One log by itself cannot burn for very long, but when many logs are put together, even if they are poor logs, they can make quite a fire. Remember the counsel of Proverbs 27:17 that "Iron sharpens iron," and even rather dull lives can help each other if they are willing to try.
Holy obedience saves worship from becoming an opiate, an escape from the pressing needs of modern life. Worship enables us to hear the call to service so clearly so that we respond, "Here am I! Send me" (Isa. 6:8). Authentic worship will impel us to join in the Lamb's war against demonic powers everywhere --- on the personal level, on the social level, on the institutional level. Jesus, the Lamb of God, is our Commander-in-Chief. We receive his orders for service and go "... conquering and to conquer ... with the word of truth ... returning love for hatred, wrestling with God against the enmity, with prayers and tears night and day, with fasting, mourning and lamentation, in patience, in faithfulness, in truth, in love unfeigned, in long suffering, and in all the fruits of the spirit, that if by any means [we] may overcome evil with good. ..." In all things and in all ways we do exactly what Christ says because we have a holy obedience that has been cultivated over years of experience.
Willard Sperry declares, "Worship is deliberate and disciplined adventure in reality." It is not for the timid or comfortable. It involves and opening of ourselves to the adventurous life of the Spirit. It makes all the religious paraphernalia of temples and priests and rites and ceremonies irrelevant. It involves a willingness to "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, as you teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, and as you sing, psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God" (Col. 3:16). So, go, even if you don't feel like it. Go, praying. Go, expecting. Go, looking for God to do a new and living work among you.
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