Yesterday, Brittne and I attended church at Brooklyn Tabernacle. I have wanted to visit there for a long time. Many years ago the pastor wrote an amazing book called ‘Fresh wind, Fresh fire’. Their church was about to close their doors when they learned how to earnestly pray and now they are a very large, ethnic church with a world renown choir. It was an amazing service but the one thing that will forever stay with me is the spirit behind their worship. The volume from the first note sung to the last was amazing. Everyone sung out wholeheartedly to God; they came to worship. I looked through the 200+ choir to find anybody that was just ‘going through the motions’ and could not find anyone. I looked around the congregation and everyone was totally engaged in worship. When it came to offering praise to the Lord without the music, you could hear them speaking their understandable words of praise to God and when they gave a clap offering, you would have thought you were at a football game. At first I was a little uncomfortable because it was out of the norm for me; yet I knew it was completely Scriptural and the way Heaven will be. I decided to step out of my comfort zone and participate wholeheartedly in the worship and I was completely blessed! It was unforgettable.
Scripture is clear that God loves the praise of his people. It speaks of the clapping of hands and the offering of praise. It also speaks of praising the Lord with all that is within me. It makes me realize that God must hate our ‘going through the motions’ in our worship. Without the right mindset we can so easily fall into that effortless behavior. We often have the mentality that we are here Lord, so bless me! Worship isn’t about us getting blessed, it is about us giving to God. Giving Him our sacrifice of praise, our time, and our teachable spirit is what our worship should be about.
Think back to yesterday. What was your attitude going to church? What was it during church? Did you judge the singing? Did you criticize the song choices? Was the sermon too long? Was it too short? Did someone get your seat and throw your whole day off? Did you sing with full volume with everything in you? Did you think about lunch during prayer time? Did you just go through the motion?
Commit now to give all that is within you the next time you go to church and experience the blessing!
Praise the LORD! Let all that I am praise the LORD. I will praise the LORD as long as I live. I will sing praises to my God with my dying breath.
Psalm 146:1-2
2 comments:
Sometimes there are those Sundays that I drag myself to church even though I don't want too but I find that often those are the Sundays that I end up worshiping the Lord with all my heart, learning something new and being completely blessed.
It's kind of sad because I can honestly say that I tend to hold my praise to an appropriate level. I stick to the norm at church. Now get me home alone getting my praise on you can bet that it's going to be wild. God likes it. :)
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