Worship On Earth As It Is In Heaven

What exactly is worship?  That’s a question I’ve been asking myself a lot lately.  Nearly every passage in the Bible that uses the word worship uses it in context of the bowing down before God, a king, or a ruler; Paul says that working as unto God can be worship, but in our modern worship services we attribute worship as music. 

Honestly, I’ve felt a disconnect with modern praise and worship but haven’t been able to put my finger on what it is, until reading this book.

In Worship On Earth As It Is In Heaven Rory Noland makes the assertion that worship is the physical part of praise.  I’m generalizing a major study and explanation when putting it that simply, but that pretty much sums up where the disconnect has been for me.  

I’m not always physically engaged in my worship.  Sometimes I get so moved in adoration and love of God that I lift my hands, and there have even been times where I’ve been so awed and afraid that I’ve fallen prostrate in His presence, but I never got that these were moments of worship.  

To some extent these feel like moments of natural worship, I mean everyone will eventually bow their knees and worship Christ as Lord, we cannot help ourselves when we’re overwhelmed by His presence, but now that I know what worship is, I want to choose to do it.

Rory Noland makes a lot of other awesome observations about praise and worship in relation to music, but this is the one that stuck with me the most.   Here are some of the others I thought were really potent:

• Next time the decibel level of a worship bothers you, take a moment and look at what worship in heaven is going to be like: flashes of lightning, peals of thunder, people shouting at the top of their lungs, and the lead worshipers (seraphim) around the throne shake the ground with their cries of “Holy, Holy, Holy”.  If loud worship makes you uncomfortable, heaven certainly will.

• We should include young people in their twenties in our worship teams.  They are the future of the church and need to be discipled in worship not just pushed away because they have different tastes in music.  The Levites who led worship were required to retire at age 50, so they could mentor the next generation to lead the congregation. Numbers 8:23-26

• Worship in heaven will be multi-ethnic and multi-generational.  We’ll be worshipping alongside people from every tribe and language and every generation that’s ever existed.  If style and taste in music were really an issue in God’s eyes, that would never work.  Real worshippers worship in Spirit and truth, not according to tastes in music.  If you can’t worship God in a range of music styles from Country to Rap to hymns to tribal chant, you’re missing the point.  We worship Him because He’s God, not because the music moves us or even because we can sing better in one style over another.  You give god your best no matter what.

• Worship is participatory.  There will be no pews to sit in in eternity.  The only one who sits in heaven is God on His throne.  He’s the only spectator.  Everyone else participates. 

I highly recommend Worship On Earth As It Is In Heaven if you can find it.  In fact I highly recommend worshipping on Earth as we will in heaven.  God is worthy!

When God Sings Over You

I had an amazing revelation about God and that verse in Zephaniah that says, “The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing” in choir practice last night, but it requires some explanation of how I found myself in the choir in the first place, so this post is going to be a little longer than my usual. 

The story starts with my wife:

I remember the first time I heard my wife sing, long before I had ever even considered dating, much less marrying her.  I was friends with her brother and was visiting with him when this amazing soprano voice and piano accompaniment filled the house.  I remember rolling my eyes and saying, “does your sister have to play her CDs so loud?” 

He smiled with some pride in his eyes and replied, “That’s her.  She’s singing.”

I stopped complaining and listened in awe.

But then my wife got sick . . . Read the rest of the article on today's Proverbs and Wisdom.

Too Much To Do

Have you ever known someone who has gone on a mission trip who came back talking about how long the worship services went?  I’ve heard of worship services ranging from four hours to the whole day on Sunday.

When I was a younger Christian in college, I even got to experience some of those hours long worship sessions with some of my closest friends.  We used to meet out in an old barn loft and just worship Jesus and pray, every night, for hours. 

How do you sustain this kind of marathon worship?  The truth is it’s because people in third world countries and college kids just don’t have much else to do.

And therein lies our problem.  The typical American Christian has their proverbial plate filled with French fry football, mashed potato movies, whole-wheat work, sugar-coated shopping, and not much room left over for the Bread of Life.  But without Jesus we’re starving.

The Christmas season is infamously busy.  There’s a lot to do over the next 20 days, but don’t let the cares of the season choke out the life of Christ within you.  And certainly don’t add to your already too full plate, when you should be scraping some of the fillers off.

Be sure that you don’t just make room for Christ this Christmas; fill your life with Him.  He’ll help you through the holidays much better than going at it without Him anyway.

Featured Non-Profit

This December with every post till Christmas, I'm featuring a non-profit worthy of support.  You can see a complete list here.

Today’s non-profit is 24-7 Prayer.

One of the greatest aspects of the 24-7 Prayer group is that they see prayer as mission.  In other words, prayer is a catalyst for mission.  Whenever you approach the throne of God, He will inevitably share His heart and a message for someone with you, and you will be directed to share it accordingly.  They have prayer/mission groups all over the world in some of the most needed of areas, where most Christians would never even go because they wouldn’t want to be associated with the people there, like the island of Ibiza.

They serve the Church as a catalyst to spark movements and communities of Christ-centered, mission-minded prayer, network with people in like-minded movements and communities to encourage and equip each other for prayer, mission and justice, provide resources on 24-7 Prayer and the building of praying communities, and gather and train emerging leaders to be catalysts for 24-7 Prayer, mission and justice.

You can give via their U.S. website:  24-7 Prayer US or via their international website: 24-7 Prayer International.

Watch the video below to get a glimpse of this ministry’s work in the name of Jesus Christ:

Come On! (Director's Cut) from 24-7 Prayer USA on Vimeo.

Come and Buy

“Hey all, the next round is on me!”  You hear that phrase a lot in movies when someone is celebrating in a bar.  In all my years of drinking in bars, I never once heard someone offer everyone in the bar the next round.  Does this really happen?

I guess it did happen to me once.  It wasn’t in a bar, mind you, and it wasn’t a round of drinks either.  But once I drank what this Guy was offering, I haven’t even wanted to go back to a bar or drink alcohol again.  His stuff was so much better.

He came up to me and said, “Every one who thirsts, come to the waters; And you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, And delight yourself in abundance.” (Isaiah 55:1-2)

And so I bought some of what He was offering, it was free after all, not cheap, but free.  I drank deeply of the Living water.  Ate my full of the broken bread from heaven.  I sipped from the cup of wine he shed for me, and grew from the milk of His word. 

Unlike the drink I was used to, indulging in what He offered didn’t cloud my mind; it made everything clear.  Maybe for the first time in my life, I felt like I could drive myself home, and He was kind enough to show me the path—I had wandered so far, and the road was a narrow one-way street, but it leads straight home. 

I asked the Man who gave me so much for so little how I could ever repay Him, and He said,  “As surely as you feed the hungry, give the thirsty something to drink, invite in the stranger, clothe the naked, and visit the sick and imprisoned in my name, you will have done it to me.” 

“What’s your name?” I asked desperate to know Him.

He face began to shine like the sun as He smiled deeply and said, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son.

But I will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations. For the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death" (Revelation 21:6-7/Exodus 34:6-7)

Like the men of old, I fell before the Ancient of Days and worshipped.  I’ve been worshipping ever since and will be worshipping forevermore.  Come, come and buy without money; the next round is on Jesus!  Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come!