There can be no scattered people of God without the gathered people of God. There can be no good works, fruit bearing, Kingdom extension, evangelism, mercy, or missions without worship. from Worship: Beholding the Beauty
To pretend homage to God and intend only the advantage to myself is rather to mock God than to worship Him. When we believe we ought to be satisfied rather than God glorified, we set God below ourselves and imagine that He should submit His own honor to our advantage....
Every word or act in worship constitutes a witness about God as well as an offering to God. The manner in which God is worshiped is a message about how God is perceived, how God’s holiness is to be reverenced and approached. from “Spiritual Formation in Corporate...
What is ironic and especially pertinent is that many debates about worship are just indirect ways of talking about ourselves, not God. Our debates devolve into how we like our worship served up each week. It's worship as consumption rather than offering. It’s an...
Worship is the celebrative response to what God has done, is doing, and promises to do.
If we create space in which God can act and speak, something surprising will happen.
The shallowness of our inner experience, the hollowness of our worship, and that servile imitation of the world which marks our promotional methods all testify that we, in this day, know God only imperfectly, and the peace of God scarcely at all.
Another misconception frequently touted is that worship should be user-friendly. I am certainly not advocating worship that alienates or is totally inaccessible, but Scripture helps us see that being confronted by God is not always comfortable or comforting. God is...
Is not formal worship, some ask, an irrelevant waste of time? Perhaps it can be so construed. For candles and flowers are as irrelevant as the song of birds, hymn and chant are as non-utilitarian as a lover’s kiss, prayers and litanies are just words—cheap as...
Worshiping is not just singing the songs from a hymnal or overhead projector. It is letting those words flow from your heart to His. This is the worship that will usher you into the courts of the Most High. from Inside the Fire: Giving Today’s Youth Something Real to...