Key Verse 2 Chronicles 7:1-3: “When Solomon finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the LORD filled the temple. The priests could not enter the temple of the LORD because the glory of the LORD filled it. When all the Israelites saw the fire coming down and the glory of the LORD above the temple, they knelt on the pavement with their faces to the ground, and they worshiped and gave thanks to the LORD, saying, “He is good; his love endures forever.”
Question for Reflections: How do you picture God when you come to worship him? What does it mean to you to worship intimately the God of all Glory?
I am not sure exactly how to describe my picture of God when I worship him. A lot of times I picture Jesus similar to the popular artistic representations that I have always seen growing up. But it is not so much how I picture him that is important to me. It is the way that I feel him physically, uncontrollably, and overwhelmingly inside of me.
I have attended many different churches that have different styles of worship. I understand what if feels like to feel the Holy Spirit moving through me. It is not always about the music as many people may think. Sure, having good musicians helps in the experience, but I have been to churches with really good musicians and not felt the Spirit very strongly. Before you think about responding to that, I will repeat myself, it has nothing to do with good musicians. When my heart and mind are in the right place with God, it is easy to worship him and feel the Spirit moving even if the music sucks. So it has a lot more to do with my current disposition than it does with the quality of the service or music.
I am trying not to get too far into how the church service experience affects worship because that is not what this is about. So I will just say, a good experience in church with good teaching, good music, and good fellowship all help me to worship better because the church body is lifting me up when maybe I cannot do so myself. If I am not receiving that support from a well rounded church body, a lot of it falls to me and I am not always strong enough to stand before God and worship him. Its a good thing that there are no rules requiring me to stand to worship.
I also want to point out that I get a great deal of worship experience out of Communion. I grew up in the Catholic Church. The service is very dry and depending on the church, the music can be a stretch to enjoy. Hymns are good, but I have gotten burned out on the traditional organ hymn music. But for me it was all about the communion. That is where I felt the Spirit moving. It was my time to sit on God’s lap and come clean and commune with Him.
But the coolest part about worship is that I don’t have to be in a church to do so. I occasionally feel like worshiping while I drive. Sometimes I will find a place to hide from everyone and get on my knees and pray and I will just cry my heart out to God. And I hate to cry, but occasionally I do when praying. I am not afraid to admit it, but I will try to hide it because I don’t like people seeing me cry. Sometimes I will sing on my own or journal my thoughts to God. But I do like to do these things in a solitary place as Jesus did. I don’t like to display too much of my outward physical worship to others because I want it to be for God alone.
Worshiping God intimately is something very special to me. I love the fact that it goes beyond the walls of a church building. I just wish that more Christians understood that sometimes.
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