We pray for the manifest presence of God but do not consider the conditions God requires for Him to come. We must build Him a habitation. Does God feel at home with us? Do we really care?.....We can tell a lot about a church by the quality of its worship. Worship is the key to God's heart and therefore the key to real growth. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts for the Lord and one another. We lay down our lives for God and one another (see Jn. 4:16). AS the love of God and one another grows, we are brought together in Him, and there is a powerful release of the Spirit. Worship is the natural outcome of such a release.
Whenever a church continuously struggles in worship, it is usually because of a relational issue within the church. We need breakthrough worship that flows out of anointed hearts joined together by what every joint supplies. Even the ordinary stones must cry out to the glory of God. How much more should we, as living stones being built together in love, become a temple of praise.
Among churches today we have two kinds of worship: synagogue and temple. Synagogue worship occurs when people come to church to hear the word of God, receive ministry, and be entertained. It represents the doing aspect of body worship. Often, because the main reason for meeting is actually people-centered rather than God-focused, this worship is usually reduced or restricted when time is pressing.
In temple worship, people come to praise God, to pray, and to make an offering. Their sole concern is for God Himself. This is home-building worship and requires a high level of adoration do God an mutual cooperation amongst people to be effective and glorious.
God seeks people to worship Him in spirit an truth (see Jn. 4:23). Worship releases the presence of God into our midst. That is why it is the key to God's heart. In worship we are completely taken up with Him.
Do our worship leaders spend more time motivating people to worship than acclaiming Christ? What type of worship songs do we sing the most? A true worship song is completely Christ-centered. Its sole focus is the total adoration and glorification of Christ. Many current songs are worship prayers dealing with our need or desire to worship Jesus rather than actually doing it.
Worship, then, is a major indicator of the church moving into the new wineskin, a different paradigm. If we have to spend a high proportion of our allocated worship time motivating people to get to a place of adoration that they should have been in when they first entered the meeting, we are in trouble spiritually.
In the new wineskin, people will come ready to worship. The worship bands are Levites with an anointing to take us into the high places of God's manifest presence. From the moment the first not is struck we are at 35,000 feet and soaring in the Spirit. We are meant to be eagles, dining on snakes and riding the thermals of high praise. Anything else is for chickens! It is possible to tell which churches have a strong revelation of the Lordship and majesty of Jesus by the strength, passion, and stamina of their worship. Many churches have good worship, but it is not enough. We must train our people how to corporately minister to the Lord. Currently many of our worship times consist of individuals opting in or out of worship depending on how they feel, on their current capacity to rise above their circumstances, or whether or not they like the songs or the music. Our worship can be a triumph of style over substance rather than a profound focus on the Person
of Jesus by group consent.
Churches that are moving into a new place in God are seriously upgrading their worship anointing. They understand the house of God priority. They are teaching their people how to minister to the Lord through deliberate, corporate focus on the attention on Jesus.
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