Worshipping God Acceptably

The following are selected portions of a letter I gave to my Church. The subject is worshipping God acceptably in our corporate worship services.

Dear Brothers and Sisters

I hope that you are rejoicing in the Lord this week and experiencing the light of His countenance. We had a wonderful time and the Men’s Bible Study last night. Bro. Jeff spoke to us on the purpose of the Church. His remarks centered around four points – 1. Worship 2. Relationship 3. Discipleship 4. Fellowship.

The things he said strongly resonated with some thoughts that the Lord has blessed me with that I have been chewing on for some time. Perhaps now would be a good time to share them with you.

My thoughts stem from two passages:

God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints, and to be had in reverence of all them that are about him. (Psalm 89:7)

Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: For our God is a consuming fire. (Hebrews 12:28-29)

My heart has been burdened with worshipping God reverently. Particularly, I’m burdened that we worship Him with reverence in our corporate (united or combined into one) worship services.

Dear ones, I hope that these words will be an encouragement to you and a means by which we might approach our worship services in a way that would reflect the fearful holiness of God. After all, He is a consuming fire.

Psalm 89:7 teaches us that when we are assembled together, God is to be feared. Do our worship services depict the fear of God or do they depict that we have become too comfortable with Him? What exactly does it mean, for those that are about Him, to hold Him in reverence? The word reverence in this verse means to be feared or dreaded. It means to stand in awe and be astonished. I have to admit, even as the preacher, that I do not approach our “worship” services with a sense of dread and fear. Why is that?

As I consider my own heart, I believe the answer lies in the fact that I do not truly believe Hebrews 12:29: “For our God is [still, now] a consuming fire.” If I really believed that the God that I say I am approaching to worship is a consuming fire, then I believe I would approach Him and our worship services differently.

That’s the point of Hebrews 12:28. Because our God is the same God whose presence inspired mortal fear in the hearts of the children of Israel when He came down in a fire-storm on Mt. Sinai, we need grace today that we could worship Him in a way that is acceptable to Him. Isn’t that amazing? We need special power from Him (His grace) so that we can have the ability to worship Him in a way that is pleasing to Him.

I would like to make a few practical suggestions for approaching God more reverently.

Preparations for corporate worship
Many times I have been guilty of not worshipping God during the week and hoping to get my depleted battery recharged on Sunday. Doubtless, we all will have periods of our lives where this will be the case. However, it should not be the norm. Sunday should not be the beginning of our week of worship. When we come together as a body, our corporate worship services should be the overflow of lives lived worshipping throughout the week.

In other words, we all (from the youngest to the oldest) should be consistently worshipping the Lord through the week so that when we come together as a Church, our worship has been rising all week and boils over when we come together. If this is going to happen, several things are going to have to take place. First, every one of us will have to spend quality time with the Lord every day of the week. That means reading our Bibles (devotionally, not mechanically), and praying (in a Christ-centered way, not man centered way). Not only this, but as Sunday approaches (Thursday, Friday, Saturday), there should be a growing anticipation of meeting together.

Just imagine if you knew that you were going to have dinner with the President of our country in three days. Would you be nervous? Would you be prepared? Would you do everything that you knew in order to be there on time, dressed appropriately, etc. Do you think your nervousness/anticipation would grow as the day approaches?

Saturdays should be a special day of preparation for Sunday services. Saturday should be a day when we become especially thoughtful and prayerful about the next day’s events. If at all possible, Saturday should be the last day of the week when we don’t get the proper amount of rest. As you come to the evening before worship services on Sunday, it would be good to be especially careful what kind of movies you watch, music you listen to, and activities you plan.

By the time you lay your head down on Saturday night, the next mornings worship services should be your primary focus. It would also be good to have as many things as possible prepared on Saturday, so that Sunday morning is not a “mad dash” to get out of the door on time for Church.

Walking in the front door
When we arrive at Church on Sunday morning, we need to take special care how we enter the House of God. One of our greatest strengths is our warmth and family-like atmosphere. How wonderful it is to come into the assembly and be warmly greeted by people who are genuinely glad to see you! In no way am I suggesting that we discontinue this practice. However, we all need to be reminded that we should not let our familiarity and comfortableness with one another cloud the fact that we are coming together in order to approach the living God. How it must quench the Spirit for us to come together for this purpose, greet one another warmly, then digress to talking about earthly things moments before we lift our voices in praise to the God of Heaven and Earth?

When we come together, warm greetings are encouraged, but they should never overlap into the time when we have set to begin our worship services. Perhaps planning to arrive at the Church building fifteen or twenty minutes early would help prevent spending precious time, set aside for praising the Lord in song, in “catching up” or visiting (which things have there proper and helpful place).

The song service
The song service is a special time of final preparation for coming into the presence of the Lord. The scriptures teach us to “come before his presence with singing” (Psalm 100:2). In other words, singing praises to God are a sort of protocol for entering into His presence. It’s as if singing praise to God is the means by which we are ushered into His presence. Since this is such a critical part of the worship service, here are a few practical suggestions to help us approach it with reverence and godly fear:
1. As much as is possible, we should all be in our seats ready to sing at the time designated to begin the worship services. What impression do we give to visitors (not to mention our children) when we don’t honour the time we’ve set aside for worship? Much more important, what are we conveying to the Lord when we treat His plan for our coming into His presence as a “take it or leave it” part of the service?
2. Once the service begins, there should be as little getting up and down as possible. Emergencies and parents with small children are exceptions, of course. If you have to get up, it should be because you truly need to in order keep from being a distraction (parent with a crying baby) or there is some other dire circumstance. In a regular length service (I can see you laughing) most of us should be able to refrain from going to the restroom. It would be a good practice to teach our children to make it a habit to stop by the restroom before the service.
3. Once the singing begins there should be absolutely no unnecessary talking. The only talking done by someone other than the worship leader or pastor should be when a song selection is called out. Unnecessary talking is a distraction and hinders the spirit of worship. (Once again, whispering to small children would be considered an exception).
4. The song selections should always be songs that are suitable for worship. Many of the songs in our songbook are not suitable for worship. Ideally, songs that are called out should be Theocentric (God-centered), not man-centered (songs about me and how I feel). You should only call a song out if you feel prompted to by the Spirit, or the song is Christ-centered (Christocentric) and appropriate for that portion of the service. A good test is to consider the words in the song and ask yourself if they would be appropriate to sing if you were standing face to face with Jesus. If we were, we would sing Holy, Holy, Holy, not – I am a Poor Wayfaring Stranger, or worse yet – Precious Memories.

Prayers and prayer requests
Prayer is an integral part of the worship service. In our public worship services we should remember that prayer is a means God has given us to worship Him. We need to remember that even our prayers are meant by God to be God-centered and not me-centered. It is easy to get bogged down with many “earthy needs” prayer requests and prayer request updates that, in the end, break the flow of our worship. Our needs do need to be carried corporately to the Lord, and we do need to know each others needs. I would like to see our prayer time in our corporate worship services become more Christ-centered, focusing on our spiritual needs rather than focusing on our earthly needs. I will be working on a system for us to record and disperse our prayer needs in a way that will be constructive and free our worship time for worship.

The preaching service
The center point of our worship is the preaching service. This is the time when the Lord speaks to us and manifests Himself to us. The preaching service is God’s response to our prayers and hymns of praise. Our prayers and songs are us speaking to God. The preaching is God speaking to us. This portion of the service should be viewed with the highest degree of reverence. Great care should be taken to be attentive and engaged, listening for what God would say to you individually.

A special word to the leaders of our homes
It is especially incumbent on the leaders of our homes to teach our families these principals and to ensure that they are being followed. Our children will take their cue from us, learning by our example how we revere the presence of the Lord in our worship services. It will take diligence on our part to model, teach, and follow through with these principals.

One last word
It is not my intention to approach this matter from a legalistic standpoint. I do not desire to hold out a list of rules for us to follow in order to earn the presence of God. I do, however, hope that you will see with me how that hungering for the presence of God might cause us to approach Him in ways that honour and magnify Him.

May we all experience and practice the presence of God with the greatest sense of hunger and humility, demonstrating to God, ourselves, our families, and the world the infinite value of the God whose name is Holy and Reverend. May God give us grace serve him acceptably with godly fear!

Your servant for Christ’s sake,
bro. matt