When you walk a dusty road you get dust on your feet. The solution? Wash your feet. When you live in a fallen world, you can’t help but come into contact with the dust of the world. The solution? Enter into the Presence of the Lord and be washed.
Entering into the Presence of God can take time: Time to allow the Holy Spirit to penetrate the hard shell that forms over our hearts as the result of living in this fallen world; time to allow the Spirit of God to adjust our thinking and transform us by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12).
That’s the reason the worship service needs to be open-ended. That is, when we come before the Lord in worship, the Holy Spirit must be allowed to take us where He wants us to go without being limited by our time constraints. That’s why, at least in the tradition I came up in, we sing a song until we are done, or until the Holy Spirit is done. We repeat the chorus; we focus on a particular phrase and sing it over and over again as the Spirit of God leads us; we stop for awhile and respond from our hearts and then sing it again; WE PRESS IN UNTIL WE PRESS THROUGH! We allow Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, to wash our feet. This is the value of taking our time in worship.
So many times, I have been part of a worship time where the songs are sung in precise ways. Even to the point where we had to sing and play the song exactly the way the author performed it on a CD. But when the worship team plays and sings it out of their own heart, it becomes their own song to the Lord. And when the words and truth of the song registers in the hearts and minds of the congregation, then we can be caught up in that truth and the worship becomes our own to the Lord. Not some mechanical recreation of something that was done in a previous service or in a recording studio.
ReplyDeleteI agree. And the worship team, presumably, has taken time to prepare for the holy task of leading others into the Presence of God. But the person in the pew frequently encounters the issue of wanting to experience God in the worship but has much to work through in order to surrender the flesh to God. If the worship leader is not sensitive to that process and struggle, he or she may move on to "the next thing" in the order of service. The sensation felt in the pew when that happens is the frustration of not having had time to "press through." A sensitive worship leader will understand this process and allow the Holy Spirit the full measure of freedom to work and to move!
ReplyDeletePastor Scott I agree;I find myself connecting with the songs of worship but often times I need more time to let the words penetrate. Sometimes the opposite is true for me too. I may not like the music of the hymn but if I concentrate on the words it takes more time to surrender to its meaning.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, it takes time for me to stop asking God for things and just worship Him.
I totally understand. I think we are all that way. Some people don't realize it because they have never pressed through! The old timers use to call it praying through: You prayed and worshipped until something happened!
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