Worship In Sprit And Truth

By Terry Virgo

Have you ever had a golf lesson? The professional tells you to take up a certain stance, to hold the club like this – no not like that, like this! – you must have your shoulders right, get your feet lined up, and your knees must be slightly bent, left arm straight – no not like that, like this. So when you go out to enjoy a game you are thinking: feet apart, fingers interwoven, arm straight, not too far. You are trying to do all this, feeling like a fool. Then a teenager with his cap the wrong way round steps up to the tee and hits his ball for 300 yards with no apparent effort!.

Learning principles of worship is reminiscent of learning to play golf. Concentrating on worship priorities can make us self-conscious at the very time that we want to be God-conscious. It’s very frustrating really, but sometimes we need to analyse.

No higher calling
Worship is our highest calling. God is seeking worshippers, so converts must become worshippers. I remember one of my pagan friends once asked, ‘What’s God’s problem? He just wants to be praised all the time.’ We tend to be nervous of people who seem to need our praise. In his books Desiring God and The Pleasures of God, John Piper argues how appropriate it is for God to seek worship. God is worthy of our praise and delight. To be pre-occupied with something less is to rob us of our chief joy and highest privilege.

When God directs us to praise Him above everything else, He knows that’s the place of our greatest fulfilment and satisfaction. He made us for Himself. So worship is fundamental to our identity and to be a worshipper is to fulfil your destiny as God’s creature. To be a non-worshipper is a tragedy, ignorant of what you are on planet earth for.

Perhaps our worship reaches full expression when we gather corporately in our churches. It should be the climax of our week. You can worship God walking down the street; but there is something special about when the saints gather with the possibility of encountering God together.

Worship leaders have a huge, frightening responsibility, to stand before scores of people as they draw near to God and aim to determine their pace and direction. That’s scary! That should get them on their knees praying for help! It’s not just about which tune to use or ‘let’s start with a fast one to wake them up’. We are talking about something profound. They are helping the saints fulfil their reason for living.

Let’s look at some principles, aware of the danger of self-consciousness but realising that principles help us to get some shape. We don’t want to be bound hard and fast with rules, but if you have no guidelines you can lose direction.

Thanksgiving
Enter His gates with thanksgiving; a simple thing but genuinely helpful. I find this in my own personal devotions as I consciously remind myself of things to thank God for. Thanksgiving is the fundamental base of worship. In Romans 1:21, where he is giving his assessment of the downward spiral of the human race, Paul describes the first step in the decline, ‘even though they knew God they did not honour Him as God or give thanks’. The first step away from God is that you don’t thank Him. The tragedy of the atheist is that he wakes up to a beautiful morning and doesn’t know who to thank. For us, when we look at the skies and the seas and the mountains we thank God.

Having deposited their kids in the Sunday school and maybe parked the car miles away, people are often pre-occupied and unprepared. So to begin simply by thanking God is a helpful way to remind us of God’s wonderful kindness and goodness, and how appropriate it is to honour Him. It’s good to give thanks to God for who He is and what He has done.

Thanksgiving is appropriate in every circumstance. People face huge problems; mortgage difficulties, family disputes, parent/child tensions. People often come in pain. It’s helpful for them to be able to say ‘in every circumstance of life I’ll praise you’ and then start adding content to declare why He is worthy of praise. So come thanking Him, honouring Him, expressing our appreciation to Him. Thanksgiving is our threshold, our doorway in.

Praise God with understanding
Praise isn’t just a religious word or something you do in church. Praise happens all the time. David Holden told me that he was at Upton Park, the home of the West Ham football team, when the Hammers scored a phenomenal goal. Di Canio took a corner and flipped the ball to Cole. He crossed it to Sinclair, who, with his back to the goal, made a scissor kick and the ball was in the back of the net! I saw it on television. Dave was right behind the goal and told me that the extraordinary thing was that the Derby fans (their opposition) stood to a man and applauded. What’s that got to do with worship? Quite a lot! Praise comes with understanding. Even the Derby fans were impressed! They understood the artistry involved. You praise what impresses you!

Often people are not praisers because they are actually not very impressed with God. The more we sing songs that tell us who God is and what He has done, the more we will understand and begin to praise.

I lived in the USA for two years. At first I didn’t know anything about American football. When I first watched it, I thought ‘this is so boring’. The other men watching were all shouting, but I had no understanding of the play and failed to recognise the skills on display. To me it was a boring game that kept on stopping and starting. I saw nothing to praise.

After living there for two years I began to understand some of the players’ phenomenal ability and flair. Then I began to praise. Praise isn’t a matter of bullying people, ‘come on what’s wrong with you this morning?’ It may be that we still haven’t got hold of enough truth or that we are singing songs with no content.

I was absent when Stuart Townend first introduced his song ‘In Christ Alone’ in our church. People were raving about it. When I heard it on tape in my car, I couldn’t hear all the words, so I wondered why everybody was so excited. But the next Sunday I was in the meeting and felt the impact of the truth in it. Don’t keep singing songs that have no content. Sing songs that absorb your mind and expand your understanding of God.

Identification
Worship is enriched by identification. I often watch our church football team on Saturday afternoon. You might be moved to admire skills in complete strangers but when it is your team your praise takes on new meaning and greater intensity. Objective appreciation is enriched by subjective identification. We are no longer applauding simply a goal well scored – we scored! We’re in the lead! We can win! Similarly, we are not moved only by the objective beauty of God, but by our identification with Him; He’s my God, my Saviour. So my praise takes on an even deeper feeling and meaning. I also have a son in the soccer team and, if he does something brilliant, there is an even closer sense of identification. Praise takes on greater intensity the more we appreciate our identification with this God, with what He has done for us in His Son.

Shout to the Lord
Praise has to be expressed. It is not fulfilled until it’s articulated. When I was baptised in the Holy Spirit, I came from a warm and loving Baptist church. I loved that church but it was not experiencing the charismatic life that I had suddenly burst into. It was difficult not to be able to shout or to clap; I was expected to keep this new experience to myself. Ultimately I could not settle for that because praise reaches its zenith in being expressed. It’s no good being at a football match and merely thinking ‘my word that was good’ when someone scores. You have to shout! When I was a young Christian, clapping in church was almost like blasphemy! Now I frequently find myself applauding God and shouting His praise alongside a ‘dancing and shouting generation’. He is worthy of praise in the way that praise is often articulated in other normal human settings, namely with wholehearted enthusiasm!

Admiration and reflection
That brings us to expressions of love and devotion that take us into another sphere. When David killed Goliath and became a warrior captain in Saul’s army, the Israelite girls sang, ‘Saul has slain his thousands, David has slain his ten thousands.’ They applauded and sang their songs of praise to David. But I am sure there were many who thought, ‘Wow, I’d love to meet him. Isn’t he wonderful?’ Some of the guys might have thought, ‘I’d like to fight alongside him.’ Following praise we can long to come closer.

Learn to recognise those moments when we have come beyond saying, ‘Wow, well done Lord. You are great,’ to ‘Lord, I want to touch you. I want to draw close to you.’ In Philippians, Paul says, ‘I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord’ (Phil. 3:8). I am reminded of Graham Kendrick’s song, ‘Knowing you Jesus, knowing you, there is no greater thing…’, a song that is probably often sung in private prayer as well as in meetings. I imagine that, if you were a song writer, it would be your greatest desire to help serve the saints to get close to Him alone so that their longings for God can grow! If we don’t reach genuine encounter we are missing out.

Encounter
‘I long for you O Lord’, ‘As the deer pants’, ‘Show me your glory’ – we are looking for moments of discovery, and carefully selected songs can help us on our way. I think sometimes we start singing in the Spirit too early in meetings. Corporate singing in the Spirit can not only sound beautiful but also lead into a dynamic spiritual experience of God’s presence. But sometimes we jump in too quickly before people are ready. That, in turn, often results in quite brief times of singing in the Spirit which don’t go anywhere. Consequently, we can get used to periods of singing in the Spirit that are not very dynamic. Times of corporate singing in the Spirit can be breathtaking and can be the prelude to the breakout of gifts of sung prophecies, sung tongues, sung interpretations, all kinds of wealth of spiritual worship.

I love that old Wimber song ‘Just like you promised you’ve come…’ I remember in the early Wimber meetings there were times when you wondered what would happen next! How often is it like that for you at a Sunday meeting?

Intoxication
There is one more step: delight and even drunkenness! The Bible says, ‘These men are not drunk as you suppose’, they were full of the Spirit. ‘Don’t get drunk with wine but be filled with the Spirit’ (Eph. 5:18). We are talking about encounters that affect you powerfully. The nearest description is this very irresponsible one of being drunk! Who would have dreamed up such a comparison? It seems outrageous! But the Bible offers the comparison. When we come together we want to taste God; His love is better than wine.

John Piper says, ‘In the end the heart longs not for any of God’s good gifts but for God Himself. To see Him and know Him and be in His presence is the soul’s final feast. Beyond this there is no quest. Words fail. We call it pleasure, joy, delight, but these are weak pointers to the unspeakable experience.’

We must not worry that this kind of worship is not ‘seeker friendly’. I have non-Christian friends who have come to our Sunday morning worship and have said to me, ‘We just cried. What did we touch? What was that?’ When we worship we want the unsaved to feel the impact and know that God is there.

Transformation
As we behold His glory we are being changed. That’s the power of worship. So we go from encounter to delight, to transformation as we behold His glory. We are being changed into His likeness from one degree of glory to another. If you experience God enough you are going to be changed. So we are being changed more and more from glory to glory as we worship and behold Him.
Don’t settle for anything less. Don’t simply sing a few songs. Worship is your highest calling. Let your mind be informed; let your will be motivated; let your heart be inflamed; let the Holy Spirit draw near for heartfelt fellowship; and let God be greatly glorified.

Worship In Sprit And Truth

By Terry Virgo

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