How Should We Worship?
Worship is Trinitarian. We fellowship with the Father, in the Son, through the Holy Spirit. God is the only one worthy of our adoration, fellowship, prayers, and honor. The Father calls us to himself through the advocacy (an advocacy that includes the cross, the grave and resurrection) of the Son and by the instrumentation of the Holy Spirit.
Because we are in the Son and when the Father sees us, he is seeing the Son in whom we are in union, and the Holy Spirit who maintains that relationship. Therefore as the Father and the Son and The Holy Spirit fellowship, we participate in that fellowship as well. In fact, since the Holy Spirit resides with the Church until the end of time, we need to see the profound nature of that work He works in us when the Body assembles to worship. It is he who maintains our fellowship. He is the one who calls us out of sin, enables us to come to faith and then maintains that faith forever. In the last chapter of the book of Revelation it is the Bride (the church) and the Spirit who call unto Christ to return. So, for now, then and until the end of time, the Holy Spirit empowers the church to do all of its functions.
Considering the depth of the nature of this relation, then what kind of worship is worthy of the Creator of the universe who has condescended to man and allowed us into his holy abode for fellowship? Do we not offer our best to him? The best of our income, the best of our time, the best of our voice and heart and mind? Do we sing meaningless jingles or words of depth? Do we prepare our hearts for worship or do we carouse all night, come in late, come to the assembled Body of Christ unprepared to be in his presence? I think the answers are obvious.
If we want to take worship seriously we must forever be aware of who God is and who we are. That means that we live our lives in anticipation of meeting God in worship. But since worship is also an eschatological event anticipating the return of Christ, we must live as those prepared to meet our returning Savior. In Church we are living proleptically (that means we are living future promises in the present) thus we assemble and worship with the same solemn (meaning the with the awe that comes from being in the presence of the living God–the word awe used in its proper way) and depth as those who are worshiping in the Book of Revelation, as if the church were already sitting at the banquet of the Lord’s Table as he lifts the cup for the first time since the night of his betrayal.
When we enter to worship, for those few minutes we are no longer those whose portfolios lost over half its value this week, we are not those whose bodies aches with the pain of age, we are not those riddled with anxiety about what we will do for a living or whose lives are troubled by the brokenness of their family. When we enter to worship, we are the People of God, the Sons and Daughters of the Father, the Siblings of the Son, the saints of God those who reside in heaven, we are the future in the this very present moment. When we worship, we are in the presence of the Father and we gather around his Word as the tree of life. We gather at his table for fellowship with the one who died for us and we find our strength renewed as we drink the cup and take the bread. And our prayers, the prayers of many as one man, are intense and deep words to our Father. And when we sing, we are in chorus with the heavenly angels as we proclaim our collective praise to our King. And for that moment are in a bubble of the future intruding into the present, a bubble that is a new heaven and a new earth. For that short time we are straining to apprehend that which has apprehended us. And when we leave that worship, we should be thirsty for more, a thirst that cannot quenched, a hunger that is cannot be satiated until we stand in his presence forever
That is how we should worship!
