How can we actively participate in God’s instruction of worship? The Lord gave Israel just such an instructional roadmap in the proclamation of the Ten Commandments, especially the first four commandments which comprise the first tablet concerning our walk with God. Let’s take these one by one and ask the question: How does this commandment teach us to worship?
LIE: Worship is an experience of God’s presence, part 1
Lie: Worship is
an experience of God’s presence.
Truth: Worship is
a response to God that results in the arrangement of our lives around God.
I can’t think of any more important subject to get right
than the subject of worship. As Christians we all would agree that worshiping
God – whatever it is – is supremely important. And most would also agree that
getting this right is the one prerequisite to getting most everything else right. But the real disagreement
enters around what worship fundamentally is.
Too often we assume that we know this but the truth is that we’re confused.
Worship is such a broad and profound subject that there are simply too many
ways to get this wrong or woefully incomplete. Until we can better understand
the nature of worship it won’t really matter to talk about how we worship, which is precisely where most of the disagreement
normally occurs.