In the last post I spoke of simulated worship.
Today I want to speak about stimulated worship.
Being a worship leader today is not easy.
Sometimes it feels like their job description is
wrapped around the idea that they are
supposed to warm up the crowd for either
God or the preacher, usually both.
Are we saying that their job is to
stimulate us? You know, get us going, get
the juices flowing so we look alive, help us
make the right amount of response to whatever
is going on, or worse yet, entertain us?
Is that the position we want to put them in?
Today, I won't go there. Where I want to go is
whether My worship HAS to be stimulated to come
forth. If we read the Word, worship seems to
happen in the most unlikely places: deserted,
arid, dry places, both physically and spiritually.
One of the most godly men that I ever met was a
little Nepalese man, *Prem Pradham, who spent
many years imprisoned for preaching his faith.
With hands and feet chained tightly, he was
placed in with the decomposing, dead bodies
of those who had died in prison. The prison
officials put him there because he had managed
to bring most of the prisoners to know the Lord.
In the middle of that stench and horror, Prem
worshipped God. I ask myself if I could worship
under such circumstances. I also ask you.
Many years ago a friend and I had a Christian
bookstore and we stocked a lot of titles by
Watchman Nee, he was the one who wrote a book
called "The Latent Power of the Soul." His
book covers were always bland so they would not
appeal to your soul so we did not sell a whole
lot of them! His book blasts away at anything
that pumps up the soul and flesh. You see where
I could go with this, but the truth is that flesh
leads to flesh, and soul leads to the soulish,
and only the Spirit of God can lead to worshipping
in Spirit and in truth.
The truth is a person with a heart to
worship can worship anywhere. If our
hearts are full of love toward God we don't not
need a thirty piece band to
get us in the mood to tell Him that
we love Him. If one happens to be there, then
we can go with that, too. :)
When you really love someone, the desire to tell
them so easily bubbles up. That love can also be
so overwhelming that no words or music can even
come close to trying to express it. This does not
mean that we can't have varying styles and
intensities of music, just that we shouldn't NEED
it to worship. Relying on outward stimulation to
bring forth genuine worship is something we must
beware of lest our hearts sing something feigned
and lest our souls lead us away from entering the
Holy of Holies.
(to be continued in the next post)
I encourage you to click on Prem Pradham's name above
and listen to his testimony. I'll post the rest of this soon!
worship leader,
faith,
true worship
church
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