Worship:
Intimacy with God
By John Wimber
Worship, the act of freely giving love to
God, forms and informs every activity of the Christian's life.
Many people who visit Vineyard Christian Fellowships around the country
remark on the depth and rich quality of our worship. This has not come
about by chance; we have a well thought out philosophy that guides why
and how we worship God. In this article I will communicate that
philosophy.
To understand how we worship God, it is helpful to learn about our
fellowship's history, which goes back to 1977. At that time my wife,
Carol, was leading a small group of people in a home meeting that
evolved into the Anaheim Vineyard. I'll let her describe what happened
at that time.
"We began worship with nothing but a sense of calling from the Lord
to a deeper relationship with Him. Before we started meeting in a small
home church setting in 1977, the Holy Spirit had been working in my
heart, creating a tremendous hunger for God.
"One day as I was praying, the word "worship" appeared in
my mind like a newspaper headline. I had never thought much about that
word before. As an evangelical Christian I had always assumed the entire
Sunday morning gathering was "worship" - and, in a sense, I
was correct. But in a different sense there were particular elements of
the service that were especially devoted to worship and not to teaching,
announcements, musical presentations, and all the other activities that
are part of a typical Sunday morning gathering. I had to admit that I
wasn't sure which part of the service was supposes to be worship.
"After we started to meet in our home gathering, I noticed times
during the meeting - usually when we sang - in which I experienced God
deeply. We sang songs, but mostly songs about worship or testimonies
from one Christian to another. But occasionally we sang a song
personally and intimately to Jesus, with lyrics like "Jesus, I love
you." Those types of songs both stirred and fed the hunger for God
within me.
"About this time I began asking our music leader why some songs
seemed to spark something in us and others didn't. As we talked about
worship, we realized that often we would sing about worship yet we never
actually worshiped - except when we accidentally stumbled onto intimate
songs like "I love you, Lord, and I lift my voice." Thus we
began to see a difference between songs about Jesus and songs to Jesus.
"Now, during this time when we were stumbling around corporately in
worship, many of us were also worshiping at home alone. During these
solitary times we were not necessarily singing, but we were bowing down,
kneeling, lifting hands, and praying spontaneously in the Spirit -
sometimes with spoken prayers, sometimes with non-verbalized prayers,
and even prayers without words at all. We noticed that as our individual
worship life deepened, when we came together there was a greater hunger
toward God. So we learned that what happens when we are alone with the
Lord determines how intimate and deep the worship will be when we come
together.
"About that time we realized our worship blessed God, that it was
for God alone and not just a vehicle of preparation for the pastor's
sermon. This was an exciting revelation. After learning about the
central place of worship in our meetings, there were many instances in
which all we did was worship God for an hour or two.
"At this time we also discovered that singing was not the only way
to worship God. Because the word worship means literally to bow down, it
is important that our bodies are involved in what our spirits are
saying. In Scripture this is accomplished through bowing our heads,
lifting our hands, kneeling, and even lying prostrate before God.
"A result of our worshiping and blessing God is being blessed by
Him. We don't worship God in order to get blessed, but we are blessed as
we worship Him. He visits His people with manifestations of the Holy
Spirit.
"Thus worship has a twofold aspect: communication with God through
the basic means of singing and praying, and communication from God
through teaching and preaching the word, prophecy, exhortation, etc. We
lift Him up and exalt Him, and as a result are drawn into His presence
where He speaks to us."
Definition
of Worship
Probably the most significant lesson that Carol and the early Vineyard
Fellowship learned was that worship is the act of freely giving love to
God. Indeed, in Psalm 18:1 we read, "I love you, O Lord, my
strength." Worship is also an expression of awe, submission, and
respect toward God: Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout
aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before Him with
thanksgiving and extol Him with music and song (Ps. 95:1-2). Sing to the
Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth. Sing to the Lord,
praise His name; proclaim His salvation day after day. Declare His glory
among the nations, His marvelous deeds among all peoples (Ps. 96:1-3).
Our heart's desire should be to worship God; we have been designed by
God for this purpose. If we don't worship God we'll worship something or
someone else.
But how should we worship God? There are various ways described in the
Old and New Testaments:
-
Adoration: praising God simply for
who He is - Lord of the universe.
-
Thanksgiving: giving thanks to God
for what He has done, especially for His works of creation and
salvation.
-
Confession: the acknowledgment of sin
and guilt to a holy and righteous God.
As Carol pointed out, worship involves
not only our thought and intellect, but also our body. Seen throughout
the Bible are such forms of prayer and praise as singing, playing
musical instruments, dancing, kneeling, bowing down, lifting hands, and
so on.
A key passage for understanding worship is found in John 4:23, 24 where
Jesus said: "the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit
and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is
spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
Jesus was saying worship must be in keeping with God's nature, which is
spirit, and it must be rooted in truth, which is found in Christ. In the
New Testament we find several important elements of worship that are not
found in the Old Testament. First and most important, we worship the
Father through His Son, Jesus Christ. Our worship is Christ-centered.
Singing is Christ-centered: to Him and about Him. Second, Jesus
commanded us to remember and worship Him through the Lord's Supper.
Third, the Holy Spirit leads our worship (1 Cor. 14), speaking to us
through prophecies and tongues and interpretation (see Acts 13 and 14).
PHASES IN THE HEART
Not only is it helpful to understand why and how we worship God, it is
also helpful to understand what happens when we worship God. In the
Vineyard we see five basic phases of worship, phases through which
leaders attempt to lead the congregation. Understanding these phases is
helpful in our experience of God. Keep in mind that as we pass through
these phases we are headed toward one goal: intimacy with God. I define
intimacy as belonging to or revealing one's deepest nature to another
(in this case to God), and it is marked by close association, presence,
and contact (I will describe these phases as they apply to corporate
worship, but they may just as easily be applied to our private practice
of worship).
The first phase is the call to worship, which is a message directed
toward the people or toward God. It is an invitation to worship. This
might be accomplished through a song like, "Come, Let Us Worship
and Bow Down." Or it may be jubilant, such as through the song,
"Don't You Know It's Time to Praise the Lord?"
The underlying thought of the call to worship is "Let's do it,
let's worship now." Song selection for the call to worship is quite
important, for this sets the tome for the gathering and directs people
to God. Is it the first night of a conference when many people may be
unfamiliar with the songs and with others in attendance? Or is it the
last night, after momentum has been building all week? If this is a
Sunday morning worship time, has the church been doing the works of God
all week? Or has the church been in the doldrums? If the church has been
doing well, Sunday worship rides on the crest of a wave. All these
thoughts are reflected in the call to worship. The ideal is that each
member of the congregation be conscious of these concerns, and praying
that the appropriate tone be set in the call to worship.
The second phase is the engagement, which is the electrifying dynamic of
connection to God and to each other. Expressions of love, adoration,
praise, jubilation, intercession, petition - all of the dynamics of
prayer are interlocked with worship - come forth from one's heart. In
the engagement phase we praise God for who He is through music as well
as prayer. An individual may have moments like these in his or her
private worship at home, but when the church comes together the manifest
presence of God is magnified and multiplied.
EXPRESSING GOD'S LOVE
As we move further in the engagement phase, we move more and more into
loving and intimate language. Being in God's presence excites our hearts
and minds and we want to praise Him for the deeds He has done, for how
He has moved in history, for His character and attributes. Jubilation is
that heart swell within us in which we want to exalt Him. The heart of
worship is to be united with our Creator and with the church universal
and historic. Remember, worship is going on all the time in heaven, and
when we worship we are joining that which is already happening, what has
been called the communion of the saints. Thus there is a powerful
corporate dynamic.
Often this intimacy causes us to meditate, even as we are singing, on
our relationship with the Lord. Sometimes we recall vows we have made
before our God. God might call to our minds disharmony or failure in our
lives, thus confession of sins is involved. Tears may flow as we see our
disharmony but His harmony; our limitations but His unlimited
possibilities. This phase in which we have been awakened to His presence
is called expression.
Physical and emotional expression in worship can result in dance and
body movement. This is an appropriate response to God if the church is
on that crest. It is inappropriate if it is whipped up or if the focal
point is on the dance rather than on true jubilation in the Lord.
I have been in some congregations where people try to create the
jubilation level without doing the works of God, especially the works of
salvation and restoration. But inevitably they fall short of true
jubilation, because God's works elicit the jubilation. The former
worship expression is fabricated, the latter genuine. If we do not exalt
God in our private lives, jubilation becomes a phony exercise in
corporate worship.
Expression then moves to a zenith, a climactic point, not unlike
physical lovemaking (doesn't Solomon use the same analogy in the Song of
Songs?). We have expressed what is in our hearts and minds and bodies,
and now it is time to wait for God to respond. Stop talking and wait for
Him to speak, to move. I call this, the fourth phase, visitation: the
almighty God visits His people.
His visitation is a byproduct of worship. We don't worship in order to
gain His presence. He is worthy to be worshiped whether or not He visits
us. But God "dwells in the praises of His people." So we
should always come to worship prepared for an audience with the King.
The church must be quickened to the fact that the God of the universe
will visit us if we but worship Him in spirit and in truth. Much of the
time when Christians come together they don't expect God to do much. But
God is like an anxious bridegroom outside the bride's door. And we, as
the bride, frequently forget what we are there for because we are
scattered in our thoughts or preoccupied with concerns.
We should expect the Spirit of God to work among us. He moves in
different ways - sometimes for salvation, sometimes for deliverances,
sometimes for sanctification or healings. God also visits through the
prophetic gifts. Often the genuine prophets in the church are too timid
to speak up. The Lord needs to deepen us in the prophetic gifts. He
visits us also through Spirit-inspired scripture reading which has a
prophetic meaning for that moment. Exhortation - that is, a word of
encouragement - can be given this way. We need to learn to wait on the
Lord and let Him speak.
GENEROSITY
The fifth phase of worship is the giving of substance. The church knows
so little about giving, yet the Bible exhorts us to give to God. It is
pathetic to see people preparing for ministry who don't know how to
give. That is like an athlete entering a race, yet he doesn't know how
to run. If we haven't learned to give money, we haven't learned
anything. Ministry is a life of giving. We give our whole lives; God
should have ownership of everything. Remember, whatever we give God
control of He can multiply and bless, not so we can amass goods, but so
we can be more involved in His enterprise.
Whatever I need to give, God inevitably first calls me to give it when I
don't have any of it - whether it is money, love, hospitality, or
information. Whatever God wants to give through us He first has to do to
us. We are the first partaker of the fruit. But we are not to eat the
seed, we are to sow it, to give it away.
The underlying premise is that whatever we are is multiplied, for good
or for bad. Whatever we have on our tree is what we are going to get in
our orchard.
As we experience these phases of worship, we experience intimacy with
God, the highest and most fulfilling calling men and women may know.
Used by permission from Vineyard
Music Group,
P.O. Box 68025, Anaheim, Ca. 92817-0825
