Should Worship Be Great? pt. 4

First, we talked about worship being great because God is great. Worship should be for, about, and with God.

Then we looked at a good bit of instructive scripture about God's requirement that worship be great; without blemish.

Now I'd like to suggest that worship should be great because the church desperately needs great worship gatherings. 

Desperately.

Part of our challenge is that we don't feel--in the deep places of our souls--a desperation for God in worship.

Thanks to the recommendation of a new pastor-friend, I've been reading through Vertical Church by James MacDonald. I'm about 98% with the pastor of Harvest Bible Chapel so far. Maybe even 99%. 

One of his insights that has been most convicting to me comprises the first half of what I'd like to share about why the church needs great worship.

A quick piece of background... consider worship as that time when the glory of God is manifest in the church. MacDonald takes a long time to make his case for that scripturally, beautifully and powerfully, but we don't have time here, so trust me. (Or read the first 150 pages of his book, which I'd highly recommend anyway!)

Unpacking 1 Samuel 4:18 the author notes: "The ark of God represented the presence of God, and Eli dies on the spot when he realized in a moment the implications of its loss. Do we have that sense of what is lost when God's glory departs? Are you even remotely as aware as Eli of what is lost when we live and worship apart from God's manifest presence?"

The church desperately needs great worship because we tragically miss the manifest presence of God.

Oh how that sentence grieves my heart. I can only imagine it grieves the heart of God as well.

There's also what I'd consider a slightly less significant, though still Biblically vital reason the church needs great worship: We're anemic.

Jesus promised (Jn 14:12) that we'd see greater things happen after He left planet earth, but few of us in the North American church would describe our churches as more powerful than that of the first century. We desperately need to be strengthened. 

Desperately.

And according to 1 Corinthians 14:5, that's what a great worship gathering should do: "When you meet together, one will sing, another will teach... But everything that is done must strengthen all of you."

Worship HAS to be great because right now too many of our gatherings are weak and so are we. We need to be strengthened.

That's the hard news.

And the glorious news is that the God we gather to worship every week is faithful, powerful, mighty, and generous, slow to anger and abounding in love.

One final word here. I can help you find ways to make worship great. But I can't do what is described in this post. This is not only above my pay grade and your ability to pay for, this is above our capacity as human beings. There ARE things I've learned that may help, but this is God's choice. It is God's place to manifest His presence. The fantastic news is that He has a desire to do so. And a great track record to go with it!