My soul clings to you,Your right hand upholds me.
In our pursuit of worship are we pursuing a “transcendent” experience where we emotionally feel a certain way or are we coming to worship knowing the power of God to work on us despite our emotions, attitudes, or failures? This “transcendent” experience might be described as “God was on the move tonight at worship” or “I felt His presence, tonight” or just “Wow”. Although experiencing God in a “transcendent”, or emotional way are often a powerful and glorious part of worship, these things are not the goal of worship. When we come into worship, we come to God with nothing. We cannot muster up a worthiness to be in His presence. This is the awesomeness of the Gospel, we come to God only with the work and worth of Jesus. We can come to him with our false motives, doubt, distractions, insecurities, failures, knowing we are accepted and loved. Worship is not something we bring to God, it is coming to God empty handed realizing that He brings everything to us. It is knowing that God is on the move and that He madly loves us, despite our wrecked up feelings, attentions, and motives. When we come to worship, we come to a God who loves us, who says that because of the work and worth of Jesus, we can, now, come boldly before His throne. And that is the key, the sweet surrender of dying to ourselves, our efforts, our struggles and trusting in the extravagant love of God, who delights in us and who enjoys us as we come to worship. So regardless of whether or not I feel a “transcendent” experience in worship, I know that God is powerfully on the move as I worship. My faith is not based on my experiences, but instead on the promises of God, through the scriptures. Oh, How great is the love of God for us.
Here is our daily struggle – the Gospel is hard to believe. We lose hope as our affections ebb and wane, placing our hopes on the love we feel for God. We so easily forget this. Instead, we struggle with how easily we lose our affection for Jesus and how easily we are distracted by the love of this world. It is a daily battle . . . no, it is a moment by moment battle. And in this battle, instead of putting our hope in the Gospel and beholding Jesus, we tend to focus inward struggling to overcome our doubts and wondering love. We forget that in the midst of these loss of affections, there is one who has won the victory, one who has loved God perfectly for us, one who has made us complete, even in our failures. So when we come to worship, we come with all our wondering affections, failures, and doubt and believe in the Gospel.
Here is where we can do some prep work. Believing in the Gospel does not come natural for us. And how it works our way into our hearts is through the declaration of the gospel. God in His wisdom has chosen to use the scriptures, prayer, and the body of Christ to declare the Gospel and to help us grow in believing the Gospel in our lives. We pray, knowing that God will not give us a stone when we ask for bread. In the body of Christ, just as the seraphim cry out to one another about the glories of God, we, too, cry out to each other the glories of the Gospel. And we come to the word of God, knowing that it powerfully works on us by grace, declaring the Gospel to our hearts. And by these means God grants faith. So while it is called, today, let us not fail to speak the wonders of the work and worth of Jesus into each others life.
True worship is growing closer to Jesus, beholding Him. It is not a feeling or and experience (although these things often happen). There is a faith that transcends all feelings or experiences. It is the powerful work of God in our lives through the work and worth of Jesus. We come to worship knowing that despite where we are in pursuing God, He is pursuing us granting us the faith to worship. In worship God brings everything, we bring nothing. God takes our focus off our own works and places our focus on His works, His pursuit, and His love for us. This is an amazing and powerful love. Knowing that He loves us despite of what we bring, transcends all experiences.
