We could turn again to the Word of God, and to Isaiah 43.
We will read from verse 1 and some other verses in this chapter.
But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob,
And He that formed thee, O Israel:
Fear not, for I have redeemed thee;
I have called thee by thy name; thou art Mine.When thou passest through the waters, they shall not overflow thee;
When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned,
Neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.For I am the Lord thy God,
The Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour.
And then, verse 19:
Behold, I will do a new thing;
Now shall it spring forth; shall ye not know it?
I will even make a way in the wilderness,
And rivers in the desert.The beasts of the field shall honour Me,
The jackals and the ostriches;
Because I give waters in the wilderness,
And rivers in the desert,
To give drink to My people, My chosen,
The people which I formed for Myself,
That they might set forth My praise.
And then, in the Psalms, first of all, Psalm 149.
Praise ye the Lord.
Sing unto the Lord a new song,
And His praise in the assembly of the saints.Let Israel rejoice in Him that made him:
Let the children of Zion be joyful in their King.
Let them praise His name in the dance:
Let them sing praises unto Him with timbrel and harp.For the Lord taketh pleasure in His people:
He will beautify the meek with salvation.
Let the saints exult in glory:
Let them sing for joy upon their beds.Let the high praises of God be in their mouth,
And a two-edged sword in their hand.
And then Psalm 145, from verse 1:
I will extol Thee, my God, O King;
And I will bless Thy name for ever and ever.
Every day will I bless Thee;
And I will praise Thy name for ever and ever.Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;
And His greatness is unsearchable.
And then, if you are able to read a little more, Psalm 95, from verse 1:
Oh come, let us sing unto the Lord;
Let us make a joyful noise to the Rock of our salvation.
Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving;
Let us make a joyful noise unto Him with psalms.For the Lord is a great God,
And a great King above all gods.
In His hand are the deep places of the earth;
The heights of the mountains are His also.
The sea is His, and He made it;
And His hands formed the dry land.Oh come, let us worship and bow down;
Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.
For He is our God,
And we are the people of His pasture,
And the sheep of His hand.Today, oh that ye would hear His voice.
And then Psalm 34, from verse 1:
I will bless the Lord at all times:
His praise shall continually be in my mouth.
My soul shall make her boast in the Lord:
The meek shall hear thereof, and be glad.Oh magnify the Lord with me,
And let us exalt His name together.
I sought the Lord, and He answered me,
And delivered me from all my fears.They looked unto Him, and were radiant;
And their faces shall never be confounded.
And lastly, one verse in the New Testament, Matthew 4:10:
Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan:
For it is written,
Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God,
And Him only shalt thou serve.
Shall we bow together in prayer?
Father, we want to thank Thee that, as we have turned to Thee in worship and in prayer, we believe Thou hast received both our worship and our petition. We would now very simply, together by faith, take an appropriate stand in that anointing which is ours for speaking and for hearing.
We pray, Lord, that Thou wilt grant that both in the speaking of Thy Word and in the hearing of Thy Word, it may be Thy grace and Thy power which is our experience. We look to Thee, O Lord, that Thou wilt be wonderfully present, fulfilling Thy design for this time this evening and writing something indelibly in our hearts, so that, Lord, there will be a performance of Thy Word.
We commit ourselves now to Thee with thanksgiving, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Now, this morning I spoke about the whole matter of worship and the power of worship. I said a little bit about this forgotten art of worship.
Every born-again Christian thinks they know something about worship. We talk about our services as a worship service, or a service of worship, or we are going to worship. But very, very rarely is it true that the Lord’s people are found worshipping the Lord.
We all see that witnessing, evangelistic outreach, prayer, and all these things are essential. We consider them to be a necessary part of the life of God’s people. But worship is something that we do not consider to be essential. We consider it to be a luxury.
Every now and again, we have a mountaintop experience where we worship the Lord. We think that perhaps once a year, or a few times a year, when we are in such high mountaintop experiences, we worship the Lord; we are released to worship the Lord. It is a luxury. It is not an essential.
Now, it is this matter that I have been giving myself to this morning, and I want to give myself to, by the enabling power of the Holy Spirit, this evening. Worship is not a luxury. It is a fundamental.
It is fundamental to all spiritual growth, to all spiritual soundness, and to all spiritual fullness and fruitfulness. If you and I do not learn how to worship in spirit and in truth, we will get absolutely nowhere, realistically, in spiritual things.
We will grow up here. God alone knows, we have enough people who have got so much up here. They are like walking spiritual encyclopaedias. They can put you right on anything. They have memorised great portions of the Bible.
But when it comes to simple things, like opening their mouth amongst the people of God and simply saying, “Lord, I love You,” they cannot do it. They cannot do it, as if their mouth is stitched up.
Oh, they know everything. They know the Bible. They have been converted for years and years and years. If they do open their mouths, it has to be a long rigmarole, a paraphrase of the Sermon on the Mount, or a précis of some portion of Isaiah, or Daniel, or Amos, or Joel.
It seems as if we cannot be simple, as if we cannot somehow come to this heart of all matters: worshipping the Lord.
Now, in my estimation, this matter is one of the great secrets of the Christian life. When a person learns how to be a worshipper, they have started at the very heart of the matter. They have come to the heart of the matter.
So this morning I spoke about the purpose of God in worship. We are a people who are to set forth His praise. We have been specifically formed that we might set forth the praise of the Lord. We are to be to the praise of His glory.
We spoke about a number of other things. I am not going to go over those, although there are a number who were not here with us this morning. You will have to listen to that on the tapes. I only hope that what I have to say this evening does not seem to you to be rather without meaning, because what we said earlier is very, very important to what I want to go on to say this evening.
Why should we worship? I will say something about this.
We should worship because God is utterly worthy to be praised.
Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;
And His greatness is unsearchable.
For this reason, it is absolutely vital that every born-again believer learn to worship the Lord. For one simple reason: it is a tremendous thing to get away from all this subjective nonsense and find that God is objectively greater than all of us put together, and the whole creation put together.
You see, it is absolutely true that the Lord is in us. But I remember years ago a very godly brother saying to me, after an exposition of our union with Christ—he was a brother that Watchman Nee said was a womb in the church, a man of travail—he said to me, “You know, brother, there is only one thing that bothers me about this truth that has been so ably and so wonderfully set before us.”
“And it is this: when we stress the Lord as Someone that we live by, Someone Who is our life, Someone Who is our power, Someone that we are absolutely one with, we cannot always worship Him.”
At the time, I could not understand what he was talking about, but I came to see it afterwards. When somehow or other you just eat the Lord, drink the Lord, breathe the Lord, feed on the Lord, you cannot always worship the Lord.
We want to get back in balance on this one. Of course, we are one with the Lord. Of course, we are to eat His flesh and drink His blood. Of course, we must drink more and more deeply into Him. Of course, we must live by Him. But there is another side to it.
He is the Man at the right hand of the Father. He is the One Who is forever enthroned at the right hand of the Majesty of God.
Now, if that is true, when I begin to see this, somehow or other I can worship. I leave myself. I go out of myself. I find Someone bigger than myself. I find Someone apart from myself. Somehow I bow before Him and worship Him.
God is utterly worthy to be praised. All these other marvellous truths must not take away from His worship, must not take us away from an outgoing worship in which we lose sight of ourselves and forget ourselves.
Another thing which I think is very important in this matter is that we were made to worship God. God made us in such a way as human beings that every human being has to worship something.
Atheists worship something. They worship man. Everybody has to worship something. Everyone has a little shrine, and something that they bow down before and own as lord.
Sometimes it is ourselves that we worship. Sometimes it is somebody else we worship. Sometimes it is a theory we worship. Sometimes it is an ideology or a philosophy that we worship. Sometimes it is some form of sport that we worship, or something else. Sometimes it is a career.
But it is always something that we worship, because we human beings were made to worship, and we have to give our worship to something. It is part of our being. It is like breathing.
No one taught you to breathe. I was never told by my mother, “In, out, in, out, in, out, in, out.” Were you? Of course not. You learned how to breathe because you are alive. If you were dead, you would not be breathing. Mind you, sometimes when I look at some, I wonder. But still—
The fact of the matter is, if you are alive, you are breathing, and no one taught you how to breathe. It is perfectly true that later on some of us are taught how to breathe because we have developed wrong ways of breathing. Well, that is another matter.
But in this matter of worship, every human being has to worship. It is not that you say to yourself, “Now, I must worship.” You do worship. That is why the Lord says so much in the Book about idolatry, so much about bowing down to other gods.
Every human being has to worship something, and whatever they worship is a god. It is an object of veneration, an object of respect, an object to which we commit ourselves. Now, we believers, we say, “Lord, Lord,” and do not the things which He says.
We all know, if we are born again, that we are supposed to worship the Lord. But the marvellous thing about this matter—and I will not say too much more, because I want to go on with these other matters—is this: we were made to worship, and we have to worship.
The marvellous thing is that when you and I worship God without turning it into prayer, and without turning it into petition, we touch something which releases peace and joy in us, and satisfaction. It is incredible. Try it.
The moment we turn it to prayer, we lose it all. But when we just worship the Lord for Who He is and what He is, and forget ourselves, and our condition, and what we need, and all that, we just say, “Lord, You are wonderful. You are so tremendous. You are eternal. You have the whole world in Your hands. You have neither beginning nor end.”
It is as if somehow we touch something, and immediately, in the most restless, unhappy situations, a peace comes into our hearts. In the most sad and anguished circumstances, joy bubbles up within. When everything around us is death, life springs up inside of us, because we have touched something which is the very heart of our being as human beings.
God made us to worship. When we worship God, suddenly, as it were, something begins to happen inside of us. Something begins to flow. Oh, it is such a secret. If only believers could find this secret—but they cannot.
It is amazing. As I said this morning, when I was finishing, you on this side—we are nearly as bad on the other side. In Europe and Britain, and the old world, as we call it in this new world, you are certainly worse on the matter of the success complex.
It is marvellous how successful people have been in America, in the United States and Canada. It is a success story. But the success complex has bitten into the whole atmosphere, so that there is an atmosphere of rush, business, strain. We have got to get on, we have got to get somewhere, we have got to succeed.
It has gone into Christian things, and people cannot even get before the Lord for one quarter of an hour without beginning to pray. People can get, when they really discipline themselves, to the Lord in prayer, but what do they do? They have a list as long as they want.
But to get to the Lord and bow down before the Lord—really to bow down before Him—and to say, “Lord, You are so wonderful. You are so marvellous,” and to spend one quarter of an hour just admiring the Lord, appreciating the Lord, what you think of Him—we think, “Oh, I cannot do it.”
“You want me to spend a quarter of an hour?” We think, “What a waste of time. Surely, if the Lord sees that, it is a waste of time. Would it not be better if I started interceding for the president, or praying for Los Angeles, or praying for Brother So-and-so, who has got a ministry somewhere and is in great opposition?”
But I am not saying you should not pray. What I am saying is this: we have lost the art of worship. Therefore, as believers and as the church, we have lost our peace, we have lost our joy, we have lost our sense of satisfaction.
We can go to all these other things, but nothing else releases within us the peace and the joy and the life of God as does worshipping the Lord.
So now I want to go on from this morning. When should we worship?
When should we worship? When we feel good? No.
Now, this is the common idea. You see, that is why we do not open our mouths and tell the Lord we love Him. That is why we do not open our mouths and express appreciation for the Lord and for what He is: because we have got the idea that you can only ever worship the Lord when things are right, or when things are good, or when you feel good.
But the psalmist had a tremendous secret. Listen to him in Psalm 34:1:
I will bless the Lord at all times:
His praise shall continually be in my mouth.
Now, did you hear that? “I will bless the Lord at all times.” When we read on in the Psalm, we find that he had trouble. Verse 6: “This poor man cried, and the Lord saved him out of all his troubles.” So he had troubles.
Verse 7: “The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them.” So he needed to be delivered. He goes on about many other things in this Psalm. If you read right through it, you will find that he had the experience of us all.
He had ups and downs. He had valleys, and he had mountaintop experiences. He went through wonderful, fertile, wooded, green country, and he went through deserts. It was his experience, just like the rest of us. But he had learned one great secret:
I will bless the Lord at all times.
Now someone says to me straightaway, “Just wait, just wait. You cannot bless the Lord at all times. Is it not being rather artificial to bless the Lord at all times?”
“I mean, are we going to get like those people who are always slapping others on the back and saying, ‘Praise the Lord’? You know, all these hallelujah maniacs. It does not matter what it is.”
Well, I remember a man who had got into such a bad habit in this matter that he could not help it. When he opened his mouth in prayer, he said things like, “Oh Lord, we stand against the hallelujah devil.”
I mean, sometimes people can be like a sausage machine, something just turning out something. It has got such a phrase, just a little phrase that comes out. It does not mean anything.
What does it mean to praise the Lord, to bless the Lord at all times? Does it mean, “Bless You, Lord”? Is that blessing the Lord at all? I do not know.
The Lord is not blessed by little empty phrases, little clichés, little sort of things that we have got hold of, that just trip out of us, that do not mean anything, that have no experience behind them, that have no history behind them. It does not mean a thing to the Lord. He is not blessed by such clichés or such empty phraseology.
How, then, do we bless the Lord at all times?
It is an interesting thing that when we read in the Book, we find a most beautiful thing about Job: when everything went wrong with Job, he had learned one great lesson. No wonder the Lord said to the enemy, “Is there anyone like My servant Job upon the earth?”
For when the Lord took away everything from him—all his sons and daughters, and all his flocks—he fell down upon his face, it says, and worshipped the Lord, and said:
The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away;
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Now, that is worship. He worshipped at a point when most of us would be absolutely shocked, when we could not worship.
Another person who worshipped in a most extraordinary place was Jonah. I cannot imagine the inside of a whale as a very pleasant place to worship. But the Book of Jonah says that he turned toward the Lord in His dwelling place and worshipped.
I have often wondered how, inside the fish in the sea, he knew which direction Jerusalem was. But I take it he must have taken it by faith and said, “Lord, I may be facing in the wrong direction, but by faith I am facing toward Your Jerusalem.” And he worshipped the Lord.
Many of us may not quite understand what worship could mean in such an extraordinary situation. In another very interesting thing, in Genesis 22, when dear Abraham took his son and thought that he was going to have to sacrifice him, he had taken it in his heart that even if he killed him, God would raise him from the dead and give him back again in life.
It says, when he spoke to the servants, he said, “Stay here; I and the lad will go yonder and worship.”
Now, that reveals an idea of worship, does it not? You would not have said everything was good there, that everything was marvellous. Poor Abraham must have had a tremendous pain in his heart at that point. But it was worship.
What, then, do we mean when we say, “I will bless the Lord at all times: His praise shall continually be in my mouth”? Or again, in Psalm 145:1:
I will extol Thee, my God, O King;
And I will bless Thy name for ever and ever.
Every day will I bless Thee;
And I will praise Thy name for ever and ever.
Or Psalm 146:2:
While I live will I praise the Lord:
I will sing praises unto my God while I have any being.
Now, these Old Testament saints got hold of a secret that many New Testament saints have not entered into. What is it that they have got hold of? They have got hold of the fact that God longs for us to be worshippers.
We have been so constituted by God, both in our creation as human beings and in His redemption, that we have to worship. When we learn to worship, something happens in our hearts.
How? Well, now here we come, really, in my estimation, to the secret of the whole thing. It is simply this: we do not worship the Lord when everything is right. We do not just worship the Lord when we feel good. That is not the heart of the matter.
Of course, we cannot worship when we are self-centred, because we do not feel good. Therefore, we do not feel we can worship the Lord, because our idea of worship is that we are telling the Lord, “I feel wonderful, Lord. I feel absolutely marvellous. I am tremendous. I thank You so much for this wonderful feeling of goodness and soundness and power and everything else. I really feel I can worship You today.”
I think the enemy goes to God and says, “Now, could I have him for a little while?” That is not a joke either. “Could I have him for a little while?” And God sort of says, “I believe he is strong enough. You have him for a little while.”
Now the enemy comes along, and he makes sure that I do not feel good. All that lovely feeling of power collapses. All that lovely feeling of soundness goes. Then I cannot worship.
So I remain silent, and when I feel perhaps that I should worship the Lord, there is a whisper in my ear that says, “Do not you worship the Lord. There are enough hypocrites already in the church without you adding to the number. You do not feel good, do you?”
And you say, “No, no, I do not.” “Well then, how can you praise the Lord?” And you say, “Well, no, of course I cannot.” “Well, you do not want to be a hypocrite, do you?” “No, I do not want to be a hypocrite.” “Well then, shut up.” And so we remain silent.
I wonder how many this morning, for instance, in our time at the Lord’s table, remained silent and quiet simply because they did not feel good. They felt tired. They felt weary. They felt, after those days up there on the mountain, more like being in bed than here this morning.
And so you say, “Oh yes, I am not in a fit state to worship this morning.” And the enemy says, “No, you are not. Just take it easy.”
Then maybe others did not feel too good about something. They got out the wrong side of the bed. So the enemy says, “No, do not you worship. It would not be true. It would not be worshipping in spirit and in truth.”
You say, “No, that is right. I would not be worshipping in truth this morning, because I feel awful.” “Yes, of course,” the enemy says. So you say, “Yes.” Then, “Keep quiet.”
So what does the enemy do? He makes sure that all of us have things, circumstances, situations, relationships, other things that come into our lives, problems, difficulties, that will make it impossible for any of us at any time to worship.
Many believers sit under a cloud for month after month after month after month. They cannot worship. They cannot praise the Lord. They cannot break through.
But listen:
I will bless the Lord at all times:
His praise shall continually be in my mouth.
Not my praise—His praise. What do we mean? The praise of Him shall be in my mouth. Ah, that makes a great difference. I can forget myself.
Supposing I got out of the wrong side of the bed. Supposing I ate something last night that did not agree with me through the night, and so I do not feel too good. My liver is a bit upside down today. So I cannot feel too good. So now I cannot—but no, not at all. Not at all.
I may feel awful, but I can be honest. Why do we have to have this artificial piety, where we always say to the Lord, “Lord, here I am. I feel marvellous, wonderful, full up,” when actually we feel nothing of the kind?
Then afterwards we feel conscience-stricken. “It is not really true, what I said. I said it in faith.” Why not be more like the old Hebrew saints, who were very honest?
Why not be able to say to the Lord—not publicly, but at home you can say to the Lord—“Lord, I feel awful. I feel awful today. I do not know what it was I ate last night, or why it is that I feel all upside down, and so on.”
“But, Lord, I want to tell You something: You are wonderful. My feeling awful has nothing to do with Your being wonderful. You are the same yesterday, today, and forever. There is nothing changed about You.”
Now, when you begin to worship the Lord like that, something happens. It is something amazing that happens in our hearts, because the Lord is always the same. He does not change.
We can worship God for what He is. We do not worship God for what we feel, but we worship God for what He is. Now there you have come to the heart of worship.
Most believers know very, very little about this kind of worship. It is not dependent upon atmosphere, upon circumstances, upon things seen, or things felt. It is dependent upon what God is.
Then you come into the most marvellous new dimension of service and worship that you have ever been in in your life. For the first time, you are no longer self-conscious. You can forget yourself.
You can forget your little circumstances, as if because you feel bad there has been a crisis in heaven, and the government of heaven is now in turmoil. The Lord is saying, “I cannot rule. [Someone] got out of bed the wrong side. It is impossible now for Me to do anything because he is feeling so bad.”
Is it not nonsense? I say it just for you to see how stupid it is. But this is where the enemy gets us. We think that because we feel so bad, or because our circumstances are difficult, or because some problem has arisen in our lives, that everything has stopped and that we cannot worship. We cannot praise the Lord.
But we can. Once we learn to do this, a most amazing thing happens: the enemy stops a whole set of devices. He finds that by tripping you up and getting you under circumstances, he is actually making you praise the Lord, and it means more to God than ever before.
So he would prefer to let you have a good time for a little while. No, that is really true. It is really true.
I knew a brother—let me give you an illustration. It is about prayer, not worship, but it is the same principle. This dear brother is one of the dearest and godliest brothers who has been with us almost from the beginning in Richmond. He is an older brother who has learned something of intercession and prayer warfare.
He did not come to our main time of prayer one week, and the second week again. We wondered what on earth had happened. We took it the first time that he just had a cold or something.
Then he came and spoke with me. He said, “Brother, it is a strange thing, but two Tuesdays ago in the afternoon, I felt so tired that I could have fallen asleep at my desk. Then I felt actually sick, so I went home and lay down and did not come to the prayer meeting.”
“But then the next morning I felt as right as rain. So I went to work and I had no problem at all. Then the next Tuesday in the afternoon, I felt the same tiredness again, and nearly fell asleep, and I felt sick again. So I lay down. The next morning I was as right as rain.”
“This has gone on now for three Tuesdays. It just suddenly occurred to me: is it the enemy?”
“Yes,” I said. “I am quite sure that this is the enemy. What you must do is this: just say out loud—do not talk to the enemy, but just say out loud—‘Oh, I do feel tired, but I shall go to the prayer meeting, and I will fall asleep, if necessary, in the prayer meeting.’”
“Really?” he said. “Yes.” And he did it. He felt more tired than ever, and he nearly did fall asleep. Then the enemy disappeared and never bothered him again.
Many of us have had such things. Is it not strange? I do not know if you have a regular time of prayer here, but you will find, those of you who have a regular time, that that is the time you feel most tired. A strange tiredness.
Now, I will tell you something. I will not challenge you to experiment, but what I would almost suggest is: why not change the day? I will tell you something: within a week or two, you will be feeling tired on the new day.
No, it is absolutely true, because it is not just a physical thing. It is a work of the enemy. This is how he stops people praising the Lord. He stops us worshipping the Lord. He just injects feelings into us.
We feel awful. We feel, as we say in slang English on my side, ratty. We feel sort of crabby and ratty. We say, “Ah, I cannot praise the Lord. I do not feel like it. I feel awful.”
Where does this sudden injection come from? It comes from the unseen, in the atmosphere. Sometimes, just when we are going to praise the Lord, or have our time with the Lord, or whatever, just before, a kind of heaviness comes down like a lid on us.
We never felt it an hour before. But just when we come to that time, we feel absolutely terrible. Now, these are enemy tactics.
If the enemy finds he succeeds, you will become a hypochondriac. Do they understand? Yes.
I will tell you something: my goodness me, there are a lot of hypochondriacs amongst the Lord’s people. It is just perverted self-centredness, that is all—seventy-five percent of it. It is a kind of never having grown up, never having got away from our self-centredness.
If you do not learn this simple lesson, you will find the enemy will play with your feelings, play with your circumstances, bring up situations, cause problems in the home, cause problems in business, somehow upset your relationships with other people, whoever they are—believer or unbeliever—and get you into a trap where you will never, ever worship the Lord, because you will never feel like it.
Then you will either collapse on this point entirely, or you will come to this marvellous experience of the psalmist:
I will bless the Lord at all times:
His praise shall continually be in my mouth.
No, I do not have to tell the Lord that I feel wonderful when I do not. Thank God, there are times when I do feel wonderful. I am glad for that. As I said, I personally am only too thankful for an ecstasy or two now and again along the road.
I know some people are frightened to death of ecstasies. They feel, “Oh no, no bother. No, no, no, no such thing. That is the soul.” We just go along in a phlegmatic way, and we do not feel anything. Everything is dull and grey and heavy and routine, and so on.
Oh, I am glad if now and again God catches us up to the third heaven and we see the Lord, or when the Spirit of glory touches us in some great problem, or when the Lord beams a shaft of light into our heart and everything becomes light for a moment, and we see light in His light.
It is wonderful to follow the Lord. There are times when we can come into the presence of the Lord with thanksgiving and say, “Lord, I have got something to thank You for. I have had a marvellous day today, absolutely marvellous. I feel wonderful.”
But do not you think that that means that you are greatly accepted, and that every day is going to be the same. No. Do not put anything on it.
The next day, you may be buffeted from morn to midnight, from the beginning to the end, knocked about, everything going wrong. As we say on my side again, maybe you have that proverb: it never rains but it pours.
Then you say, “I cannot worship the Lord today.” Shall we come in down deep and heavy and say, “No, good Lord, no. I would be a hypocrite if I were to say anything to You today. I have had a dreadful day.”
Our feeling is that you cannot possibly go into the presence of God and say you have had a dreadful day. He would be deeply offended. I mean, no Christian should have a dreadful day, because the kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit; joy unspeakable and full of glory; peace which passeth understanding.
So the devil says, “You cannot praise the Lord. You did not know peace which passes understanding. You were quite neurotic.” You say, “Oh dear, yes, I was.”
Then the enemy says to you, “You have not been a good testimony today. Just think.” But do you know, even when you have been a bad testimony, and you have to say, “Lord, forgive me. I was irritable today. I did this and this today, and I have had an awful day. It has been dreadful,” you can still bow down and worship the Lord.
You can say, “Do You know what is so wonderful, Father? The Lord Jesus is the same yesterday and today and forever. My burst of irritation has not changed a thing about Him. Praise the Lord.”
Do you not think that is wonderful? I do. Maybe you do not. I just find it absolutely marvellous, when we are so tied to ourselves and our own condition and everything else, how can we really worship?
But what a wonderful thing it is to be severed from ourselves and go beyond ourselves, and be able to think of the Lord and to think of those things which do not change and are not affected by our little circumstances.
Shall I give you a few things, if you want to take a pencil? I do not want to systematise this thing, but maybe it will sink into your heart by the Spirit of God and you will not need to. Here are a few things that I think you can worship the Lord for.
First, why do not you worship the Lord for what He is? Why do we always have to worship Him for what He does?
I notice that nearly everybody, when they open their mouth, says, “Lord, thank You for saving me.” Well, praise God for that. We would not be here if we had not been saved.
But do you know what a wonderful thing it is when we can come before the Lord and worship Him and say, “Lord, You are so full of love”? That is something beyond you, beyond your circumstances.
You can worship Him for what He is: love, light, life, truth, righteousness, holiness, mercy—all the attributes of the Lord. Oh, the glorious character of God.
We could go on and on just talking about worshipping Him for what He is. What a lovely thing it would be if tomorrow you sat down for five minutes and thought about the greatness of God. Nothing else—just the greatness of God.
Perhaps you took a few moments of silence first and just reflected and thought, “This God—God is infinite. Great, unsearchable greatness.”
If you want any help, here is a little bit of help for you. I would start to think: He has no beginning and no end. Think of that.
Then I would think of Him as “I AM.” Oh, I love that. “I AM THAT I AM,” not “I have been that I have been.” To hear some Christians, I think His name is “I Have Been.”
He only could ever do anything in the past. He split the Red Sea in the past, and He led them through the wilderness of Sinai in the past, and He brought down the walls of Jericho in the past, and He caused the moon and sun to stand still in the past. He has done everything in the past. Everything seems to have ended with the canon of Scripture. Now He does nothing.
“I AM.” Think of Him.
Here is something else you can think about. Why do not you think about Him in the Lord Jesus? Oh, what a thought. Think of God in Christ.
Think of the Lord Jesus, and the way the Lord Jesus lived, and the way the Lord Jesus came to the earth, and the way He ministered, and the way He strove for us, and the way He died on the cross. Think all the way through: that is God. That is what God is like.
Do you not think that would start to give you something to worship? You would not have to think about your aches and pains and all the rest, because He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He has not changed.
So you can start to praise Him: “Lord, how beautiful You are. How full of grace and truth You are. How glorious You are. How powerful You are.”
There is something else you can think about too, that is beyond you. What about His finished work? I find that a tremendous thing to praise God for.
Oh, I love this, because the devil cannot bear to think that the work of the Lord Jesus is actually finished. He likes to make us all feel that we have got to add something to it, and that it is still open-ended.
But when you begin to praise the Lord and say, “Lord, that finished work—the veil of the temple was torn in two. Think of that. We unsaved, fallen human beings have been brought to You through that finished work.”
“In that finished work, every single thing that you and I need to be saved has been done—finished. Not a t to be crossed, not an i to be dotted. Every single thing is done.”
Oh, what a cause for worship. I could not do it; He has done it. It does not matter if I feel bad, or melancholy one morning, or under a dark cloud. It makes no difference to the finished work of the Lord Jesus.
It was finished nineteen hundred years ago. Praise the Lord. My little bad time this morning is not going to do anything to it. Done. Oh, I may feel bad, but the work is the same.
Do you not think that is a cause for praise? Just think for a while: “Well, I am having such bad feelings. I feel awful. Or this news, or I got a letter which has upset me, or some other kind of news on the telephone which has really upset me and brought me down into a valley.”
But praise God, nothing can touch that finished work of the Lord Jesus. That was finished on the cross, and God set His seal to it. That is cause for praise.
Now here is another cause for praise: what about the present position of the Lord Jesus? Oh, wonderful.
Above every name that is named, all principality and power, made Head over everything to the church, all things in subjection under His feet. That is a cause for praise, is it not?
You have got to learn to be a good soldier, enduring hardness. These little moods, these little situations and circumstances, seem so great and huge to us, and they are nothing really. They are pinpricks.
We have got to endure hardness and not let them get us down, but praise God and worship God, forgetting ourselves and what we feel.
What about the Word of the Lord? I always think that is something to praise God for. His Word abides forever.
I often think, when I am in a bad way, “Here am I thinking of a sentence of God’s Word which meant something to King David, and then meant something perhaps to John the Baptist, and then meant something to the apostles.”
Then it meant something to Augustine, and then something to Martin Luther, and then something to George Fox, and then something to John Wesley, and now it means something to me. Praise the Lord. It is abiding forever.
Well now, I just hope that you begin to understand the power of worship. You see, when you begin to learn to be a worshipper, Jesus said that the Father seeks such to worship Him.
God is Spirit, He said in John 4, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.
That does not mean that your soul does not come into it. Mary led the way when she said:
My spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour,
And my soul doth magnify the Lord.
Her spirit began and her soul followed, and that is the right way round. We do not want the soul starting and the spirit somehow being dragged along behind, if at all. What we want is something that begins in the spirit, and then the soul follows.
When should we worship? At all times. How then can we worship? We can only worship at all times when we forget ourselves and our circumstances and think about Him.
When we get hold of those things which have nothing to do with our circumstances, in one sense, then we begin to worship. We find that somehow or other, after a while, we look at our situations and circumstances through different eyes.
We have suddenly seen the Lord high and lifted up, His train filling the temple. We have suddenly seen the One Who is Head over everything to the church. We have suddenly seen the One under Whose feet everything has been placed.
Then we see our situations through different eyes. Oh, we must learn to be worshippers.
Now, what is worship? Let us be clear on this. Worship is not prayer. Many people think petition, asking, is worship. It is not. It is not request, or petition, or asking. It is not prayer.
And worship is not sermonising. I do not know—our dear Lord has more sermons preached at Him than anybody else in the universe. No congregation had ever had as many sermons preached at them as our Lord has had by His people.
Sometimes I almost wonder, irreverently, why we do not ask Him to come forward and make a decision.
It is incredible to me what some people get up to in prayer. They sort of feel that somehow or other they have got to paraphrase a whole thing. Now, do not get me wrong: the promises of God have to be stood upon when they are given to us by the Holy Spirit.
We have to stand upon the Word of God, upon the statements of God’s Word, upon the promises of God’s Word. That is how we overcome: through the Word of God.
But this sermonising, this flowery kind of paraphrasing of Scripture, sometimes is a form of unreality. God is almost saying, “I do not want to listen anymore.”
It is almost as if He would tap your shoulder and say, “My child, My child, I wrote it. I know all about it. I know what is in it. You do not have to go—” It is an unreality.
People are always telling me, “Come to our prayer meeting; there is someone else who prays. Oh, I wish I could pray like that.” Then when we listen, what do we find? We find great flowery oratory that goes all round the world, and nothing is done.
The Lord Jesus said, “Do not be like the Gentiles, who believe in vain repetition.” What is vain repetition, unless it is taking things and, by oratory, putting them all in wonderful, high-flowing, high-blown phrases? What does it mean?
Now, if you are taking the Word of God and standing on it in a situation, that is a different thing. You are using it as the sword of God, the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. Then it means something.
Then you can take a Word of God, and you come with the high praises of God in your mouth and a two-edged sword in your hand, as it says in Psalm 149. Wonderful. You are praising the Lord, you are worshipping the Lord, and in your hand you have the Word of God.
You execute judgments in the name of the Lord. You bind nobles and kings through the judgment which is written, through the Word.
Oh, if only we knew how to take principalities, or powers, or the world rulers of this darkness, and by worship and by the Word of God put them in their place. But this other kind of sermonising is nothing whatsoever to do with this prayer warfare, or this worship warfare, or the service of the battlefield.
Sermonising—there is such a lot of sermonising. That is not worship.
What is worship? It is the simple, direct expression of love. That is the heart of the matter.
That is why I said this morning: God is more delighted by one person who has been thirty years in Christ, who opens his or her mouth and says, “Lord, I love You with all my heart.” That means so much to the Lord.
Yet somehow or other, when we are gathered in worship, when we are in an open time of worship, sometimes when we have got something very simple, we feel, “I cannot give it. It is too simple.”
So we get into this awful form of words where it has to be all sort of high and mighty, and it does not mean anything. If next time you have a very simple little thought about how worthy the Lord is, or how you want to say, “I love You, Lord,” why do you not just open your mouth and say it?
Just tell the Lord how much. Do not always feel that you have got to say, “I love You, Lord.” There are times when you can express it for us and say, “Lord, we want You to know today, we love You.”
That goes more to the heart of God than a thousand of these sermonising pieces.
So, what does the Bible say about worship? It says, first of all, we bless the Lord. That is rather beautiful, is it not? How do we bless the Lord?
I suppose it means we make Him happy. In Hebrew, blessing is happiness. The word means to be happy, or to be made happy, or happiness. So I suppose to bless the Lord means we make Him happy.
Would that not be beautiful? If you and I, in all our weakness and frailty, were able to make the Lord happy—some joy comes into His heart, some smile comes onto His face, some reaction in His great heart of love because of something you have given to Him today.
We bless the Lord. We praise the Lord. That is Psalm 34:1. Another word is that we exalt His name.
Psalm 34 says, “Let us exalt His name together.” How do we exalt the name of the Lord unless we say things about the name of the Lord which are absolutely true? We cannot make the name of the Lord Jesus higher than it is, but we can exalt His name.
Then another wonderful thing I thought about is magnifying the Lord. Has anyone ever thought what it means to magnify the Lord? Some people have got the idea it means that you make the Lord bigger than He is. That is not magnifying.
What do you do when you take a magnifying glass? You take a magnifying glass, hold it up, and take one little portion and bring it out. You see it more clearly. You magnify.
You cannot make the Lord bigger than He is or greater than He is. But what you can do when you worship Him is take a magnifying glass, look at one little attribute, and draw out that attribute.
Maybe it is His grace. Maybe it is His mercy. Maybe it is His love. Maybe it is His holiness. Maybe it is His greatness, His infinity. But you magnify the Lord.
What a job we have, then, as believers. Would that not be marvellous if, when next we met around the Lord’s table, everyone came with a spiritual magnifying glass and everyone drew out something of the Lord?
Would that not be marvellous? No wonder the unsaved will get saved. It says in 1 Corinthians 14 that the unsaved amongst you will fall down and worship, saying, “God is in this place.”
Because when you look round, you see people really worshipping. They are out of themselves. They are really in touch with God.
What is the heart of real worship? The heart of real worship is not words and is not just a form. The heart of worship is found in Romans 12:1-2:
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God,
To present your bodies a living sacrifice,
Holy, acceptable unto God,
Which is your spiritual worship.
So, in the end, worship is not only words and not only the expression of our love, but worship is the wholehearted committal of ourselves to God—lock, stock, and barrel. The whole of our being. That is spiritually intelligent worship.
You notice, it is not to men. We do not give ourselves to apostles, or prophets, or teachers, lock, stock, and barrel. This is false teaching.
We are not, under any circumstances, to commit ourselves one hundred percent to men like that. We are to commit ourselves as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God—to God. That is our spiritually intelligent worship.
Then we commit ourselves to one another, to the Lord in one another. That is a very different thing.
Well now, I think we have to come to an end with all this matter. What is the power of worship? Here is the power of worship, just to go over what we have said.
First of all, God is magnified and Christ is extolled. I think that is power. We live in an essentially spiritual world.
This world in which we are, which seems to be so physical, is not a physical world, actually. Behind it are spiritual realities. There are invisible things as well as visible.
When we worship the Lord individually or corporately, something wonderful happens. God is magnified; Christ is extolled.
I will extol Thee, O God, my King;
Every day will I bless Thy name.
That does something in the unseen, more than a prayer meeting sometimes, more than a Bible study. The worship, the true worship of God’s people, rolls back the enemy. Heaviness is dispelled. All that enemy activity, device, and so on, is somehow rendered ineffective.
Secondly, the power of worship is that the devil fears and flees. I do not think the devil can bear God’s people worshipping the Lord. It is the one thing he wants: worship. He cannot bear it when the people of God really worship God. He departs.
The body of Christ is built up when we really worship. Oh, it is a marvellous thing when we worship together. I suppose we all know meetings where we go out more weary than when we came in. I hope it is not true of this evening.
We come in weary enough, but we go out even more weary. We just about drag ourselves out. We do not want that.
What a wonderful thing it is when we come into a meeting, feel a bit weary, and suddenly the Lord comes into the whole time and lifts us—not in an emotional way, not just in the soul’s way, but really by the Spirit of God.
One after another, people praise the Lord and worship the Lord, and you feel ministered to. You cannot say why, but something happens to you. You are built up. The body of Christ is edified.
The power of worship is that we experience, individually as well as corporately, joy and release and peace when we worship. Try it. Just try it. I think you will find it will transform your life.
I am so sad when I see all these new cults, the transcendental meditation things, the yoga thing—not so new, but these things spreading everywhere, taking everyone. We believers ought to be leading the way in the right thing.
There is such a thing as real meditation, and it is all part of worship. If we only, instead of getting caught up in this rat race, could allow God to make us what He wants us to be as redeemed human beings, we would be leading the way in this.
People would see in us a peace and a joy and a light they do not see in the world. The unsaved are attracted by this thing.
So let me finish by saying first something about corporate worship, and finally something about what is the key to it. First, corporate worship.
You know, when we come together in corporate worship, I think one of the greatest problems—and I speak now simply, almost in an aside—is fear.
It is incredible. Wherever I go, I find a strong system or a dictatorship where you are not allowed to do this or you are not allowed to do that, or there are taboos or conventions. I understand.
But in many of the groups I go to, there are no taboos, no conventions. If there are conventions, they are unwritten. Afterwards people come up to you and say, “You know, I do not feel free. In that time we had, I so wanted to—but I just did not feel free.”
What happens? We all blame one another. We blame the leadership. We blame this brother. We blame that brother. We blame this sister. We blame that. We say, “Oh, it is this teaching or that teaching.” It is nothing of the kind. It is just fear. It is the fear of man.
Most believers have got something bubbling somewhere deep down inside of them, but they are frightened to let it out. “Oh, Brother So-and-so will sit on me if I say something like that.”
Or someone says, “It is too simple.” Sometimes we have got something and we think, “That is too full.” If you are older in the Lord, the enemy comes to you and says, “Now you shut up. You let the younger ones have a chance instead of imposing all your nonsense on them.”
So you say, “Oh yes, I must be quiet.” So you shut up. He has got you tied up now. Then he goes to the younger ones and says, “You are far too young. You think you can praise the Lord? You are only a year old. Goodness. Look at these ones here. They have been twenty years on. If they do not open their mouths, nor should you.”
So what has the enemy done? He has tied up the old ones. He has tied up the younger ones. Everybody is tied up, and we all sit and look at each other, waiting for a stirring of the water.
We are waiting for an angel to go down and stir the water. We are all waiting, waiting. Then finally what happens? Someone chooses a favourite hymn. Oh.
Then someone else chooses another favourite hymn. Then Brother So-and-so prays the same thing he has prayed every Sunday morning for fifteen years. Then somebody else comes with their favourite passage of Scripture. I mean, oh.
Then we say, “Well, of course, the trouble here in this company is the leadership.” It is nothing to do with the leadership. It is the enemy. The enemy is tying everybody up.
So why do we not start to wake up on this thing when we come? We are the body of Christ. The body of Christ is not one member; it is many members. So we all have a responsibility.
The elders are not here to sort of charge ahead and everyone else try to keep up with them. The job of the elder brothers is administration.
When it comes to gatherings, the job of the elder brethren is to see that error does not come in and the counterfeit does not come in. But they can stay in the background when we have an open time of praise and worship.
It is the body, under the direction of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit can take someone who is very simple in the Lord and very young in the Lord, and open their mouth, and suddenly it is like heaven opening over us all.
Then someone else praises the Lord, and before we know where we are, we are swept along by the Spirit of God—not in emotion, but in a real unfolding of our Lord before our lives.
Oh, how precious such a thing is. How wonderful it is. Any company of God’s people that has touched real worship will never be the same again. Never, never.
You have touched home. From then on, you are spoiled for anything less and anything else. It is the most wonderful thing in the world to be in the presence of God’s people when there is a real spirit of worship, a glorifying the Lord, a magnifying the Lord, an exalting of His name together, an extolling of Him.
Fear. What shall we do with fear? Some of you say to me, “Yes, but could it possibly be that I am in the flesh?” Yes, a very real possibility.
Then you say, “Well then, surely I ought to be very careful.” Well now, I quite agree. But has anybody ever learned how to pray publicly who, having made one mistake, shuts up until they are more spiritual?
I have never known it. Those people shut up for life. They never open their mouths again.
You never learned to walk that way. Which of you started to walk and never fell? Every one of us fell.
Which of you opened your mouth and spoke perfect Queen’s English? None of you on this side. Sorry for that naughty crack.
Which of you opened your mouth as a little babe and spoke perfect English? None of you. Not me, not you, none of us.
Because when we opened our mouths, we were, “Blah, blah, blah, blah.” Then we said funny little things. We could not say “Dad”; we said “Baba,” or whatever else. We had all funny little names for things. We got things wrong.
Did Father come in and say, “Now listen here: not one single word more from you until you learn to speak English properly”? Mother never said, “Go to your room. Go to your room until you can call your father Ethelbert correctly.”
Now, of course you laugh, but it goes to the root of the thing, does it not? Of course, we would not expect a child, when a child starts to speak, not to make all kinds of mistakes.
When a person begins to praise the Lord, they make mistakes. When a person begins to pray, they make mistakes. When a person begins to intercede, they make mistakes. When a person begins to exercise gifts, they make mistakes. We must be ready for that.
Heaven does not fall in because someone put their foot in it in a prayer meeting.
Now, it is entirely wrong when someone stands up and says, “Thus saith the Lord,” and it is the devil; or when someone stands up and says, “Thus saith the Lord,” and it is contrary to Scripture. That is wrong.
But when it is a mistake because we are young in the Lord, we are innocent, we do not really know where we are going, or perhaps we have got some weaknesses, the Lord says, “Now, now, I understand that.”
We have a bad time about it, and the problem is burnt up inside of us by having a bad time. The next time, if we go on in faith, we have learned that lesson.
So why do we not start to look at this like this? Why cannot we come together and all of us look to God? Why do we come and sit there waiting for Brother So-and-so to start, or waiting for certain responsible brethren to get the thing off the ground?
Why do we not come in, sit down, and each one of us say, “Lord, I am here, and under Your direction I am available. I want to be with You for this time. I want this time to be glorious. I want it to be full.”
There may be young ones in the Lord. They are going to make a mistake. Praise the Lord if they do. We will help them. We will not frown at them and glare at them. We will just seek to help. So we will go on together.
If we could learn what to do with our fears and these satanic devices, we would begin to discover the functioning of the body of our Lord Jesus in ways that we never believed possible before.
So, dear, dear ones, what a wonderful thing it is when we come to the Lord. The apostle said:
When ye come together, each one hath a psalm,
Hath a teaching, hath a revelation,
Hath a tongue, hath an interpretation.
What is it then, brethren?
Let all things be done unto edifying.
It is a wonderful thing when God can use the body, not only in a worship time but in any other time. In our prayer time, He leads us through it from point to point instead of going all over the world.
In other open times of Bible study, or just coming together for fellowship, the Holy Spirit can lead us. One has this, one has that, one has the other, and it is the most wonderful—not a jumble, not a tangle, but a most wonderful unfolding of a divine mind.
Well, I think I have said enough about corporate worship. But there is something wonderful about corporate worship, just as there is something significant about individual worship.
I pray that we may learn how to open our mouths together and praise the Lord. Do not be afraid in worship of silence either.
Some people have got a kind of disease about silence. They feel that as soon as there is silence, you must fill it with something. The Quakers had something to teach us on silence.
Sometimes there is a five-minute silence. It is difficult sometimes with the children, but when there is a five-minute silence—absolute silence—it can be glorious.
God can come near and draw out of our hearts all kinds of things which come out later. We are all to rest in the Lord, not to feel we have to be noisy, not to feel we have to be like a graveyard, but just to be under His direction.
Now, what is the key? Very simply, I have gone over it all, so I shall only mention these things.
First, deliberately put on the garment of praise. That is the first thing. Deliberately put on the garment of praise. Isaiah 61:3 and Isaiah 61:10 spoke about this morning.
Secondly, be definite with yourself. Have any of you ever noticed how the psalmist, who understood a good deal more than some New Testament Christians, treats himself?
Bless the Lord, O my soul.
Who is talking to whom? “Bless the Lord, O my soul.” Do you know, you have to get hold of your soul sometimes by the scruff of the neck. Do not think that that soul will always feel like worshipping the Lord.
There are times when you have to get hold of your soul and say, “Now, now, my soul, come on. We are going to worship the Lord.”
Your soul can be like an old, uncared-for garden—all weeds, everything growing everywhere. It is a riot of life, but it is not disciplined.
What you have to do is, by the Spirit, you have got to clip that thing and get it all into order. The psalmist said in another place, “I have quieted my soul like a weaned child.”
Now, that means the child is crying and squawking, perhaps a little bit irritable, but the child has to be quietened. Do you know how to quieten your soul like a weaned child?
So be definite with yourself about this thing. Remember, we are the circumcision who worship by the Spirit of God. In other words, by the Spirit, in our spirit, we worship the Lord.
So we begin to worship. It begins in our spirit, and we say, “Now, my soul, get on with it.” Do not think that you can just worship the Lord in spirit and there is no soul in it. You have got to bring your soul in.
Your soul is the thing that brings the warmth into it. Your soul is the thing that brings the poetry in. Your soul is the thing that brings the colour in. Your soul is the thing that brings the originality in.
So first, your spirit; but you must say, “My soul, bless the Lord.”
Thirdly, be normal. Be normal and natural, uninhibited.
It is a strange thing that amongst the Lord’s people we are so abnormal. As soon as we come to adore, we somehow become abnormal. As soon as we come into a meeting, we have a special meeting face, a special pious look.
We have a special kind of phraseology, a special kind of way. It is very strange how we become so abnormal. Why cannot we be normal?
We must lift our voice so everyone can hear. That is a point of fellowship, is it not, when we are together? But why cannot we be normal? It is a wonderful thing to be normal.
Should I tell you something? God has saved some very eccentric people. When He saves these eccentric people, they normally remain eccentric. But we do not have to all be eccentric.
Everyone needs to be themselves. So if you are a little bit strange—I mean, you are one of these people who eat nuts and lettuce all the time and nothing else—okay. Okay.
As long as you do not try to make me eat nuts and lettuce all the time, or whatever else, as long as you do it as unto the Lord, that is okay.
But there are some people who are very, very strange. They have very strange habits and ways, and yet they are precious. Oh, I could keep you for an hour or two speaking to you about Christian eccentrics I have known—really precious ones.
I am not talking about the really devilish ones. I could fill St Paul’s Cathedral with the two witnesses from Revelation 11 that I have met in my life. I have met eleven Messiahs.
Of course, being in Jerusalem, naturally we meet them. They sort of come up and say, “You know who I am?” I say, “No.” They say, “I am the Messiah.” “Oh,” I say, “really?”
Very, very strange. You do get weird people, but I am not talking about that. There are genuine eccentrics. God saves some; well, they remain eccentric. But we want to be normal people.
Lastly, be filled with the Spirit. Be filled with the Spirit, because the Book says the most beautiful thing about this:
Speaking one to another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,
Singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord.
Now, that is very beautiful. I have found in my experience that people are unable to do this unless they are filled with the Spirit. But when people are filled with the Spirit, then there is a way in which there is a release inside, and they become worshippers.
May God help us in this matter of worship. I hope God has spoken some word into your heart, both individually and together as a people.
I was not put up to this, by the way, speaking on worship. I really did feel in my heart, when I came back from a conference, “What shall I give to those dear people tomorrow?”
Then, when lying down for an hour, suddenly it came into my heart, “Speak to them on the power of worship.”
I pray that God will use these few poor words of mine on the matter of worship to your great blessing and instruction and release. May it be that, if in God’s good grace and mercy He allows me to come back, I may meet with those who, in the grace of God, have become worshippers.
Those of you who are worshippers, may the Lord bless you and help you to go on. Those of you who have not ever known what it is to worship the Lord, may you from this day be led to worship Him in spirit and in truth.
Shall we pray?
Dear Lord, wilt Thou watch over this word to perform it? Blot out anything that has been said due to my weakness, Lord—anything untoward.
But all that has been of Thyself, Lord, write it in our hearts. Lord, above everything else, make us to be true worshippers of the Lord.
Teach us how to worship Thee together as well as individually. We ask this together in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Hymn number 323. Let us stand and worship the Lord in our singing. Number 323.
Lord of glory, Christ of God.