Worship Wednesday: Corporate Worship and Religiousity

I have to admit that all of the Worship Wednesday posts on this blog have dealt mostly with our private, personal worship of God. There is a reason for that...I struggle with corporate worship! I know; it's a strange confession for a worship leader to make, but I have to be absolutely honest here...sometimes corporate worship disgusts me! Sometimes corporate worship makes me absolutely sick to my stomach. I've just seen so much self-focused worship in the church, and even I have been guilty of it at times. If you have ever sat in a worship service and said, "I am getting nothing out of this," then you have been guilty too. I've realized that  in order for us to have a right heart towards corporate worship, we must be lifting our hearts in worship privately and we must be in tune with the Holy Spirit...walking by the Spirit daily.

A.W. Tozer says some powerful things about worship and expresses my concern and my heart's desire concerning corporate worship. Consider these excerpts from the book Tozer on Worship and Entertainment:

" A local church exists to do - corporately what each should do individually - namely, worship God. It should show forth the excellencies of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light, reflect back the glory of Him who shines down on us, even God, even Christ, even the Holy Ghost."

" The stark, tragic fact is that the efforts of many people to worship are unacceptable to God. Without an infusion of the Holy Spirit there can be no true worship.This is serious. It is hard for me to rest peacefully at night knowing that millions of cultured, religious people are merely carrying on church tradition and religious customs and they are not actually reaching God at all."

" In my opinion, the great single need of the moment is that lighthearted superficial religionists be struck down with a vision of God high and lifted up, with His train filling the temple. The holy art of worship seems to have passed away like the Shekinah glory from the tabernacle. As a result, we are left to or own devices and forced to make up for the lack of spontaneous worship by bringing in countless cheap and tawdry activities to hold the attention of the church people."

" It is certainly true that hardly anything is missing from our churches these days - except the most important thing. We are missing the genuine and sacred offering of ourselves and our worship to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."

  
The main problem is that we can not worship what we do not know. We have to know God to truly worship Him. We must be wrestling personally with scriptures and in prayer. I'm not just talking about reading the Bible piously so that we can check it off the list of holy, religious things to do...you will never KNOW God that way. You may be acquainted with Him, but you won't really know who He is...and thus you will be worshiping your own idea of God (an idol...a cheap imitation) and not truly worshiping God. As a church, we should be teaching people to be worshipers not just teaching them to be workers for the Lord.


Tozer says that we must be worshipers before we can be workers...

"Yes, worship of the loving God is man's whole reason for existence. That is why we are born and that is why we are born again from above.That is why we were created and that is why we have been recreated. That is why there was a genesis at the beginning, and that is why there is a regenesis, called regeneration.That is also why there is a church. The Christian church exists to worship God first of all. Everything else must come second or third or fourth or fifth..." 

" Unless we are worshipers, we are simply religious dancing mice, moving around in a circle getting nowhere...God wants worshipers first. Jesus did not redeem us to make us workers; He redeemed us to make us worshipers. And then, out of the blazing worship of our hearts springs our works."

In Acts 17: 22-30, Paul says this to the religious people of Athens:

“Men of Athens, I notice that you are very religious in every way, for as I was walking along I saw your many shrines. And one of your altars had this inscription on it: ‘To an Unknown God.’ This God, whom you worship without knowing, is the one I’m telling you about.

“He is the God who made the world and everything in it. Since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn't live in man-made temples, and human hands can’t serve his needs—for he has no needs. He himself gives life and breath to everything, and he satisfies every need. From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand when they should rise and fall, and he determined their boundaries.

“His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and exist. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ And since this is true, we shouldn’t think of God as an idol designed by craftsmen from gold or silver or stone.

“God overlooked people’s ignorance about these things in earlier times, but now he commands everyone everywhere to repent of their sins and turn to him.

I don't know about you, but this passage certainly prompts me to search out my heart and see if I have been worshiping any idols or any false notions of God...or myself and my own works for that matter! I desire for our churches to truly worship God. I desire to leave behind my personal feeling and opinions on Sunday morning and enter into fellowship with God alongside other believers who desire to do the same. Ultimately, I long for the renewal and revival of corporate worship. We need to encourage and spur one another on towards true worship of God. We need to point each other to Him, instead of pointing fingers at one another! We need to encourage each other to worship...not to perform empty worthless acts of service!


Tozer says...

" I am looking for the fellowship of the burning heart - for men and women of all generations everywhere who love the Savior until adoration becomes the music of their soul until they don't have to be fooled with and entertained and amused."

Oh how I hunger for that!! God help me to do everything I do for you out of an overflow of love and adoration! Help me to be a good private worshiper and a good corporate worshiper!