Passionate
Worship
Dr. Larry Thorson
1 How lovely is your dwelling place, LORD Almighty! 2 My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the
LORD; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. 3 Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest
for herself, where she may have her young— a place near your altar, LORD
Almighty, my King and my God. 4 Blessed are those who dwell
in your house; they are ever praising you. 5
Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on
pilgrimage. 6 As
they pass through the Valley of Baka, they make it a place of springs; the
autumn rains also cover it with pools. 7
They go from strength to strength, till each appears before God in
Today’s New International Version Copyright © 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society
What we just read was a description of
passionate worship, a characteristic of a fruitful congregation. Last week and for the next few weeks we’re
looking at what makes a fruitful congregation.
Churches are like trees producing fruit to nourish people and reproduce
itself.
“My soul yearns, even faints, for
the courts of the LORD.” Wow. Presbyterians have people fainting in church all
the time but it’s usually not because of passionate worship. Passionate worship is when you so experience
the presence of God that all you want to do is offer back to God your gratitude
or help someone else experience that presence.
Everything else is peripheral.
Passionate worship comes from a filling of God’s
Holy Spirit. But people try to
substitute technique for the Holy Spirit.
One church I visited advertised having passionate worship so I went out
to see what it was like. As I was
sitting there waiting for the service to begin I looked up at the ceiling and
every few feet there was a speaker. When
the service began all those speakers were cranked up to a rock concert
fervour.
Presbyterian worship has been called many
things;, dignified, majestic, beautiful but rarely is it called
passionate. I’ve heard people say of the
formal high church style of worship where everything is rehearsed that it’s
stuffy, boring and predictable. How can a
free moving Spirit of God be in that?
I’ve heard others say of the contemporary style service “it’s too loud,
irreverent and disgusting. How can God
be in a set of loud drums…he would go deaf?
I’ve heard people say to me they can’t stand our time of joys and
concerns. They call it
embarrassing. It’s unrehearsed. It’s unpredictable. How can a God of order be in that?
As a pastor I have to sort through all
these different desires for worship and come up with something meaningful for
the community I’m called to minister. As
you know it’s not an easy task. But
passionate worship doesn’t come out of technique but from God’s heart. It doesn’t matter whether we use an organ or
a set of drums. That’s just technique. What matters is that we use our Spirit given
gifts as authentically as we can. In
other words we are who we are and we have what we have and we need to be
grateful for what we have and use what we have the best that we can.
We all have a need to worship God. When we worship God we can only worship in
one of two ways; personally alone with God or communally with other people. Personal worship involves no one but you and
God. It’s what I do every morning at
5:30. It’s a time when I open my Bible
and have a little worship time. I don’t
listen to any other voices at that time, just the Word of God. That’s personal worship time. I couldn’t live without it.
Communal worship time is where we see, hear
and worship God in people around us. We
don’t worship the people just like we don’t worship our building or statues but
in people we can see God in the flesh. God
is influencing and inspiring people to live out his life among us. That’s communal worship. We need both kinds of worship to fully
experience God. People say they can stay
home and worship God just fine. If you do you’re going to miss a huge, dynamic
aspect of God that you can only experience in one another.
The problem people sometimes have with communal
worship is when they come to church expecting personal worship and they get
only communal worship. For example in my
last church I made it a practice as I do here to walk the aisles before worship
and greet people. It’s part of my
preparation for worship. I’m looking to
see God in you and that happens every week.
But in my last church there was a very devout and serious believer who
complained to the office that my talking to people at their seats before the service
was breaking her concentration in preparing for worship. She saw personal worship as the only valid
way to experience God.
In the old Scottish church they wanted no communal
influences in worship. Even the sermon
illustrations had to come from the Scriptures, never personal and definitely no
jokes. In the strictest of Scottish
churches even singing was only done from the Psalms and never with an
instrument because that was considered human.
Everything in worship had to be vertical. That’s not so true now in
My preference would be to have some personal
worship time and some communal worship time in every service. Our services aren’t balanced here right now. We have almost no quiet time. I might give thirty seconds to silence at the
end of my prayer but that’s it. That
needs to change. We need to hear from
God through one another but we also need to hear God with our spiritual
ears.
Passionate worship involves passionate
singing. We sing to God and to one
another as a way to express our gratitude to God for forgiving us of our
sins. We have a choir, not to entertain
us, but to help us reflect on the beauty and majesty of God. Our music director Mary Ellen picks out our
hymns and choir anthems based on the direction we believe God is leading us for
that Sunday. While you may not know the
hymns, the music or like its speed, the words will always praise God. While my own personal music tastes prefers fast
paced, short praise songs that’s not who we are right now. I appreciate our choir, what Mary Ellen has
done with our choir, and her choice of hymns because they always praise
God. What you get in Mary Ellen is
someone passionate about worshipping her savior Jesus Christ. Passionate worship is not about technique or
music tastes but about the Spirit of God.
We read Scripture, not to hear a history
lesson, but to learn more about God. We have a time of joys and concerns, not
as a way for people to have a chance to voice their thoughts, but to hear how
God is working through each of us. It is
a time when God is actually interacting with us. Some people are polished public speakers and
carefully rehearse what they’re going to say but polished public speakers
aren’t the only people God is speaking or working through.
Before I came here I never liked sharing
joys and concerns in a worship service.
Oftentimes what I heard people sharing in church was depressing. Other times things were being shared that I
couldn’t hear or understand the context because I wasn’t a part of that
church. For six years in
We have a time for young disciples as a way
to say to our children when we’re speaking above their heads that they’re
important. We have a pastoral prayer to
demonstrate to God and each other that we know where the source of our strength
is.
When we gather to worship on Sunday it’s to
acknowledge to God and to one another how it was God who reached down to us
sinners and forgave our sins. That’s
it. That’s all there is to coming to
church. We’re just a group of forgiven
sinners praising God for what he has done.
Anything apart from that is just coincidental and peripheral.
If
when you come to church on Sunday you’re more concerned with whether paint is
chipping from the ceiling or whether the organ is going to be played or whether
the joys and concerns are going to drag the service out, or whether communion
is going to be brought to you on a platter you’ve come to church for the wrong
reason. If when you come to church on
Sunday and say the music is too old, too slow or the preaching is too dull, too
soft or too confusing you’ve come for the wrong reason.
But if when you come to church on Sunday, with
all the problems that you have, with all the aches, all the bumps and all the
lumps that come from living in the battle we call life, if you when you come
you come to praise and thank him for what you do have you will have come for
the one reason God created this church and gave us this room.
Passionate worship comes out of being
passionate for God. If you can’t say
with the Psalmist in v.2 “My soul yearns,
even faints, for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh cry out for the
living God” then it’s time to come
to Jesus. You might say “But I’ve come
to Jesus” well then come again. In Acts
19:1-7 there was a group of men who had come to Jesus yet they had never been
filled with his Holy Spirit. They said
“…we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit”. At that point the apostle
Paul laid hands on them and they were baptized in the Holy Spirit. That’s how you get passionate worship. May we be known as church passionate for God
with a passionate worship driven not by loud speakers or well rehearsed script
but authentically driven by God’s Spirit. It all starts with a filling of God’s Holy
Spirit.