Worship 7 When Worship Hits Home

[HKHaugan]

Remember the old saying, “Home is where the heart is?” We know that Heaven is our true home and getting hold of that is a heart thing. The Lord Jesus came to bring His people home and how we prepare is worship as has been displayed in this series. When God gets the glory we have a taste of home. Paul tells us, “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God (1Cor.10:31).” He says this after covering a series of interpersonal issues in the Corinthian church. Their daily worship as individuals and groups had deteriorated through division, immorality, abuse of marriage, lawsuits and idolatry. In Chapter 11-14 on he deals with worship as the remedy and cure and in chapter 15 seals the whole of his Corinthian concern with a teaching on the Resurrection of Jesus.

“Do it all for the glory of God” is the heart of worship for our hearts. Recalling the steps of our tour through worship, from individual to group to congregational celebration it is God's glory that we are desiring above all. Worship is not entertainment or a show or attempts to impress anyone or gain favor before God and man but a humbling of the self before the majesty that is God. Now I say this to emphasize another dimension of congregational celebration, the personal. When Sunday comes, or for that matter, any gathering where shared worship takes place, individuals are still individual images of God. It is not a platform where the individual disappears, the charismatic leader takes over, the music becomes a performance and the prayers recitations without personal participation. You only have to continue reading Paul's letter to the Corinthians from Chapter 11 on through 15, which I strongly suggest you do, to see how much the individual heart meant to him, to grasp his realization that the depth of worship is in the individual's participation. What the Lord Jesus had done for his heart was what he wanted for everyone.

Old Testament worship depended on an institutional priesthood, a precise liturgical form demanding individual submission where all that was required was Sabbath attendance and daily legal obedience. When we read Paul's accounts in the New Testament, leadership was there but a different kind of leadership. Worship leadership encouraged lots of participation. Worship was an open heart relational experience. Everyone was involved. No matter in what condition the believer or unbeliever came, Paul taught the Lord wanted everyone to sense they were a part of the worship experience. How does Paul express this? When he talks about spiritual gifts in Chapter 12. It is the believer that can be the blessing for the unbeliever when personal gifts are shared as well as the mutual benefit of believers to one another. This is why he writes Chapter 13.

The whole of Chapter 13 is devoted to the atmosphere in which spiritual gifts operate---love. Yes, faith, hope and love are mentioned together. Yes, faith in the presence of Jesus, no question. Yes, hope in His Resurrection which is to be ours. But the real worship context for faith and hope in its three formats, individual, group and congregation, is love, the relational touch of God for each heart. Love influences how we use those gifts in our daily worship as well as our gathered worship. You get the same feeling when you read Paul's teachings on spiritual gifts in Romans 12 and Ephesians 4 which are given in the context of God's call to love.

Perhaps our hearts know when real worship, that is real worship, takes place. When we are loving God we can face, absorb and embrace what the New Testament word 'worship' is translated from--- proskeuno, to kiss –- kissing God's heart and God's heart kissing us. An extreme image? I hope so. Think about what that really means when hearts meet on the holiest of levels. The clashing of the images of past sins, their forgiveness, the incredible yet obvious reality of sin, evil and grace, like three gigantic waves crashing into each other where grace thrashes sin and evil in its backwash right there in the heart and in that moment only the clean sand of peace emerges, a peace beyond the mind that envelops the heart. Repentance and forgiveness washing the shore of our indulgent past. And again the beaches' sands, our minds, hearts and spirits, await the ongoing tides of God's grace through faith and His love readmitted in our celebration of His Cross and Resurrection. Washed in the blood of the Lamb.

For the tidal experience of God's grace and truth to move in and out of our hearts we need to visit those spiritual gifts in our celebratory worship where those heart gifts are shared. The first two worship forms, personal and group prepare us for the third, the gathering. In gathered worship we expect testimony, concerns and gifts to be shared. These help build the Body of Christ. When spiritual gifts are undertaken in day-to-day prayer, Scripture and 'Jesus-consciousness, we bring our experiences of them into the 'Gathering,' worshiping together. Paul is clear about this, “Since you are eager to have spiritual gifts, try and excel in gifts that build up the church (1Cor.14:12).” He is very specific. There, ecstatic gifts, tongues, prophecy, word of knowledge, interpretation, teaching, revelation and discernment can be offered.

Personal testimony brings the faith from Heaven to earth, from speculation to reality, from the invisible to the visible. Personal testimony is a picture of the Incarnation, God becoming man in Jesus, the ultimate testimony.

Personal prayers give the larger Body opportunities to share in the hope of seeing the Resurrection in the answers to come. Not answers that we want but those that God wills for His purposes. These increase our trust as we gather to celebrate the 'already' and the 'not yet' to come.

Personal reception of the physical bread and wine then carry our whole being as the 'proskeuno,' the mutual spiritual reality of the Lord God's kiss, the climactic moment in gathered worship. That reception is not verified by emotion but by faith. After all the week's involvement emotions may be stirred in gathered worship. Wonderful, but not verification any more than how we are emotionally touched in any situation. It's a moment that brings thanksgiving for a touch from God which is what 'blessing' means. He is blessing our emotionality as well as our mind and our spirit. It is grace through faith, truth through His Word and personal submission to the Holy Spirit's nudging that grips the whole person. It's all worship. “For the Kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men (1Cor.14:17-18).” And God is glorified. Amen? Amen!