Authentic worship, part 2

My concern is that the issue of worship will define not only our church services, but also our theology and our beliefs about God. There is no more important issue for the church of the Lord Jesus Christ that that we worship as God would have us to worship Him.

Theology strives to serve the church so that the people of God worship Him more faithfully. By understanding God’s revelation in His Word we know how He would wish to be worshipped.  Theology is the conversation of the people of God seeking to understand the Lord whom we worship and how He wills to be worshipped:

• What are the proper conditions of evangelical worship?
• What is the pattern for worship among those who claim to established in the gospel and submitted to the Word of God?

As it says in John 4:23-24,
“But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

A.W. Tozer said this not so long ago about the state of worship in the church:

It is now common practice in most evangelical churches to offer the people, especially the young people, a maximum of entertainment and a minimum of serious instruction. It is scarcely possible in most places to get anyone to attend the meeting where the only attraction is God. One can only conclude that God’s professed children are bored with Him for they must be wooed to meeting with a stick of striped candy in the form of religious movies, games and refreshments.

These days, we often have a strange anomaly of orthodoxy in creed and heterodoxy in practice. Meaning: we have a good, honorable motive of winning people to church/Jesus, but we are using Christ-dishonoring methods of getting people onboard.  As much as we have drawn all these people to come to church, what have we really won them to?  True discipleship? Cross-carrying? Self-denial? Separation from the world? Crucifixition of the flesh? Holy living? Nobility of character? Despising the world’s treasures? Hard self-discipline? Love for God? Total commitment and surrender to Christ?

We all have different opinions concerning worship, and how the church service should be run, how fellowship should be run…but the real question is:

Does God care about how He is worshipped?

OR

Is He some kind of laissez-faire deity who does NOT care how His people worship Him, but is resting in the hopes that somebody somewhere will in some way just worship Him?!?

(The answer… coming soon in Part 3)

[Authentic Worship: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.]