Worship 17 Living for All Its Worth

[HKHaugan]

Aren't you glad when you pray that you don't get the usual automated phone voice that says, “Thank you for holding. We value your call. Your call is special to us and we will be with you in just a moment. So please remain on the line and your call will be answered in the order in which it was received.”? That's not just once either. It continues on for many minutes until a real person gets on the line. Access to the Lord is instantaneous, in the Spirit and heard in spite of our imperfection but its intention known perfectly and dealt with according to His wisdom. Prayer is part of our daily worship. Prayer opens us to worship. More about prayer later.

To fully grasp worship is to accept that everything is spiritually founded, grounded and sounded in God who is Spirit (John 4:24). The One God we worship is invisible but visibly apprehended in Jesus who revealed that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Creation is both visible and invisible. Just as you have all the seen vistas of earth's mountains and valleys, the universe's stars and planets, there are the invisible parts like wind, gravity, magnetism and who knows the immensity and depth of the space in which it all exists or the magnitude of the One who holds it all together?

Then you have life, the teeming movement within the cells that drives the forms in which it is found and its very special human components, self-conscious human beings. It is this self-conscious human existence, being a person, that is the objective of the Creator's intention, to make images of Himself to experience what lies behind the massive physical dimension, enjoy a relationship with Him and manage the part in which each finds him and herself. It's this spiritual, personal and relational dimension that is the most important to Him. This is the Kingdom out of which everything comes and worship is its access point, the kingdom we pray to come on earth as it exists in Heaven.

Worship is the border crossing. The Cross is its bridge and faith its passport. We pass over from the seen to the unseen, where the unreal is resolved in the real, the temporary to the eternal, where sin and evil are washed away, the darkness clears and the moment becomes lit in brilliant eternity. The world's temporary credentials are stamped null and void. You have moved into the land of God's heart, mind and Spirit. But this is not in any way an escapist denial of the physical reality which we are now experiencing. Rather it is embracing the moment, every moment, and allowing the Holy Spirit to guide us. This is not about being at church or a worship service or fleeing reality to be in a social comfort zone. What it is about is that every moment is first of all a God moment where the worth, the value, the treasures of Heaven, the peak of wealth is His presence. It is a spiritual moment of opportunity to serve Him which is worship in its purest form. He is just plain worth it, the ship of worth, “Thou art worthy, O Lord.”

Every moment is a spiritual moment, a personal moment and a relational moment. What measures that moment is the real diamond in the rough, the work of the Holy Spirit and His continuing removal of the sinful grit that covers it. The Cross is the vivid image that challenges our reluctance, our fear, to be involved in the heart of another person or the stand we have to take to exhibit the worth of God. The excuses with which we may cover ourselves in self-justification for not having acted, spoken or listened. It's the faith to take up our cross which is what faith is all about. That is the calling in every moment, the call to worship. It may be the 'no, I can't' or the 'yes, I can,' the moment to love or the moment to avoid or even that nondescript Shakespearean question 'To be or not to be?'

Worship can be a phone call, a smile, checking and responding to a facial expression, an unexpected call for help. It could be a hospital visit or listening to a problem. Then there is the conversation with a stranger you realize is not a coincidence but a spiritual nudge to engage in faith. How about the prayer concerns brought up in a small group or among friends? Then too, the temptations that face us everyday to compromise the eternal worth of a moment for a temporary solution, to forgive and forget or resent and repent. Is it more faithful to be silent or to stand out? Are the issues we face in the world in our control or God's control? How much are we distracted by what we can't control? One person I know made a wise observation about a relational issue that was absolutely correct, “Right now, I am not so much a peace maker as I am a peace keeper.” That was an eternal insight in a temporary situation. “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary and what is unseen is eternal (2Cor.4:18).”

The visible and invisible Creation is a copy of the visible and invisible spiritual dimension of God and people, of life and death, good and evil, love and hate, faith and fear. Relationships are both visible and invisible as is the character of those who are in them. We are created visible and invisible male and female beings, the visible sexualities with their invisible intention to both multiply, manage the visible reality before them with worship as their context.

Walking in the Spirit is bringing the Kingdom of God into this world, the eternal brought into the temporary. The Old Testament taken alone is full of illustrations of the visible and invisible that can leave us with mere speculation. It is the copy and shadow of reign of God in Jesus, the Christ it foretells. So it's in the New Testament that everything begins to find clarity. Through Jesus our physical eyes and hearts point to their spiritual counterparts with the abilities for insight, awareness, sensitivity, understanding and self-consciousness, parts of the image of the 'I AM' in us. We are visible and invisible beings, images of God dressed in flesh. So too our environment with its physical explosions of volcanoes, earthquakes, lightning, thunder, storms and the migrant activities of asteroids and whirling planets, are visible reminders of the internal forces of sin and evil that war against the heart. Alone we have no control over them in the physical realm so we have no control over the spiritual forces that strive against us, until.......

Until we realize there is no calm in the inner or outer world until the Prince of Peace is allowed to reign and be in control there. Then and only then can we recognize our spiritual need for Him to be our personal Savior and Lord and bestow in our hearts the Holy Spirit to be our personal guide and power to stand against what keeps us in lonely and frustrating anxiety. Jesus was conceived by the Spirit, born in the Spirit, lived by the Spirit, died in the Spirit, rose in the Spirit and ascended in the Spirit. Through His Cross and Resurrection we have access to eternity and eternity now in every next moment. “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full (Jn.10:10).” That makes every next moment a moment of worship. Now that's something to pray about.