Genuine worship involves feelings
Chapter 7
Genuine worship involves feelings
Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, came to the high priest, and asked him for letters for the synagogues of Damascus, in order to find some men O women of this Way, he brought them captive to Jerusalem. But while traveling on the road, it happened that as they approached Damascus, suddenly he was surrounded by a glow of light from the sky; and falling on the ground, he heard a voice saying to him: Saul, Saul, why do you Do you pursue? He said: Who are you, Lord? And he said: I am Jesus, to whom you are chasing; it is hard for you to kick against the pricks. He, trembling and fearful, said: Lord, what do you want me to do? And the Lord said to him: Arise and enter the city, and it will be told to you what you must do. what you must do. And the men who were with Saul stood still astonished, hearing the truth the voice, yet seeing no one. Then Saul rose from the ground, and when he opened his eyes, he saw no one; so, taking him by the hand, they led him into Damascus, where He was three days without seeing, and he did not eat or drink.
Acts 9:1–9
How much time do you think will pass, if the Lord Jesus has not yet returned, between today and the day when some of the new and wonderful churches like those in the Baliem Valley of Irian Jaya, Indonesia, Send missionaries to preach the gospel in Canada and the United States? If that idea makes him uncomfortable, he urgently needs to read this chapter.
I have a reason to suggest this as a possibility at some point. moment in the future. In Chicago, I was introduced to a brother. Cristiano deeply committed to the Lord who was coming from his country, India, with a moving and grateful testimony of grace of God in his life. I asked him about the church he was coming from. It was not Pentecostal. It was neither Anglican nor Baptist; much less
Presbyterian or Methodist. I didn't even know what the term meant. interdenominational. He was simply a brother in Christ.
The man had been born into the Hindu religion but converted and became to be a disciple of Jesus Christ by reading and studying seriously the New Testament and the events related to death and resurrection of our Lord. He spoke English well enough well as to express their concern for the world and for the churches. I asked him to preach from the pulpit of the church I pastor.
Through that meeting, I understood that unless we awaken spiritually, unless we are led once again to a love, a genuine worship and praise, God can take away the candelabrum. It is likely that we will need missionaries who come to our land and show us what Christianity is genuine and lively.
We should never forget that God created us to be worshipers. joyful but sin led us to everything but worship. Then by the love and mercy of God manifested in Christ Jesus, we were restored to communion with God through the miracle of new birth. "You have been forgiven and restored," it reminds us God, 'I am your Creator, Redeemer, and Lord and I delight in your praise.' Dear friend, I don't know how that makes you feel, but in my case, I feel What should I respond to God with all my heart? I'm glad that God consider me a worshiper.
I have used the word 'feel' and I know that you might have a reaction. snapshot against her. In fact, there are people who have told me in a dogmatic way that they will never allow "feelings" to make part of their life and spiritual experience. I usually respond to them: "I'm sorry for you." I say this because I have a very clear definition real of what I believe is true worship: worship is feeling in the heart.
In the Christian faith, we should be able to use the word 'feel.' calmly and without having to apologize. There is nothing worse than that.
one can say about the Christian church that the fact that we are people without feelings. Worship must always arise from an attitude internal and possesses countless characteristics including the mental, spiritual and emotional. It is likely that at times you do not worship with the same level of passion, love, and wonder with which he does it in other occasions but the attitude and state of mind are consistent when one worships the Lord.
When a father and husband is upset, the intensity of love and the concern for his family seems to be minimal; the same happens when are tired after long hours of work or when certain events they make you feel depressed. Externally, they may not show much love. towards his family but the truth is that love is present because he Love is not just a feeling. It is an attitude and a state of mind. It is a continuous act that is subject to different levels of intensity and perfection.
I entered the kingdom of God with joy, knowing that I had been forgiven. I know the emotions that arise when one converts to Christ. Nevertheless, I remember very well that at the beginning of my Christian life there were people who warned me about the dangers of the "feelings". They cited the biblical example of Isaac when feeling the Jacob's arms and to think that they were Esau's. Therefore, the man who he was guided by feelings was mistaken.
That sounds interesting, but it's not something you can to base a Christian doctrine. Think about the narrative that appears in the gospel of the woman who suffered from a flow of blood for twelve years and that he had suffered many things and visited many doctors. Marcos tells us that when she heard about Jesus, she came in the middle. from the crowd and simply touched the cloak of the Lord. "And immediately the source of blood dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that scourge" (Mark 5:29). Then, knowing what the Savior had made in his body, "came and fell before Him, and told Him everything truth" (5:33). His testimony was manifested in worship and praise; she felt in her body that she had been healed.
Those of us who have been blessed in our inner being with all security we do not rely solely on emotions; on the other hand, If our hearts feel nothing, it means we are dead. If tomorrow you wake up and feel absolutely nothing in your arm right (that is to say if you notice that your arm is completely numb), he will use his right hand to get dressed and will quickly go to the doctor because that can only indicate that they have a serious health problem.
True worship, among other things, is a feeling in our heart with respect to our Lord God, and we must be willing to express that feeling in the most appropriate way. We can express our worship to God in many ways. But if we love the Lord and we are guided by His Holy Spirit, our worship will always go accompanied by a delightful attitude of admiration, amazement, and sincerity humility on our part.
The man or woman whose heart is proud and haughty cannot to worship God in an acceptable way because they are as proud as the devil himself. There must be humility in the heart of the person who He intends to worship God in spirit and in truth.
The modern way of thinking that characterizes today's man with Regarding worship, it makes me feel very uncomfortable. It's worth it. mention that true worship will never be the result of the manipulation plus engineering. Is it not glimpsed in the future? a moment when churches call their pastors the 'engineers' "spirituals"? I've heard there are psychiatrists they call "engineers". "humans" because, obviously, their work is related to our head. We have reduced so many things to the terms of the engineering, the scientific or the psychological that the advent of the "spiritual engineers" is a very real possibility. But this never will replace what I have been calling in this book as the wonderful amazement that characterizes the registered worshipers in the Bible.
We found many examples of that amazement and wonder. spiritual in the book of Acts. These elements are always present.
present when the Holy Spirit guides the believers. On the other hand, It is also true that when the Holy Spirit is not present, the wonder and amazement disappear. Engineers can perform many invaluable things in their fields of action but there are none no human capacity or ability can perform miracles and mysteries of God among men. If there is no astonishment, if there is no a sacred experience, all our efforts to achieve worship will be useless. There is no worship without the Spirit.
If it were possible to understand and discern God through anyone from our human means, then we could not adore him because there is an undeniable truth, we will never bend our knees and we will say: "Holy, Holy, Holy" to someone or something that we were able to decipher and understand with our mind. That which I manage to explain never me it will lead to the point of astonishment; it will never be able to fill me with admiration, devotion or fascination.
Philosophers used to refer to the mystery of the person of God as the "mystery conundrum." But we who are children of God through from faith we call him 'Our Father who art in heaven'. In the church activities where there is life, blessing, and wonder in the adoration, there is also a sense of divine mystery. Paul it expressed in supreme form for us by saying: "Christ in you," the hope of glory.
So, what happens in a Christian church when the vital work and Does the freshness of the Spirit of God produce a revival? According to my study and observations, a revival generally produces a reestablishment of the spirit of worship, which is not the result of the engineering or manipulation. It is something that God grants them. people who hunger and thirst for Him. Along with the renewed spirit a blessed spirit of loving worship arises.
Believers worship with all willingness because they possess a sublime perspective of God. In some groups, God has been reduced, summarized, modified, edited, transformed, and interpreted to such an extent that is no longer the God that Isaiah saw, high and lofty. Since he has been
reduced in the minds of so many people, we no longer have the unfaltering trust that we once had in the character of the Lord. But He remains the God before whom we can go without doubts or fears. We know that he will not deceive us or disappoint us. He will not change his the pact and its way of thinking. We must be convinced. We must to have conviction in order to present ourselves before your presence with absolute trust. Our heart must believe that: "let God be true, and every man a liar" (Romans 3:4).
The God of all the earth cannot be wrong and does not need to be transformed; on the contrary, the inadequate concept that man It has from God, yes it needs transformation. Fortunately, since God made us in His image, He granted us the ability to appreciate and admire their attributes. On one occasion, I heard Dr. George D. Watson, one of the great biblical masters of this generation, to point out that men can have two types of love for God: the love of gratitude or excellent love. It urged us to move from gratitude to a love for God simply because He is God and for His excellence of his character.
Unfortunately, the children of God almost never cross the boundaries of gratitude. I rarely hear someone say in the middle of their prayers who worships God and praises Him for the excellence of His character. Many we are Christian 'Santa Clauses'. We believe that God is a person who decorates the Christmas tree and fills it with gifts. That kind of love is very immature.
We must move forward and know the blessing of worship in the presence of God without being attacked by thoughts of wanting to end Soon. We need to delight in the presence of excellence. infinite and indescribable. That kind of worship has the ingredients of the fascination and the thrill of moral excellence. It is evident that some of the men and women who appear in the Bible knew this type of fascination in their communion with God. If we are to love and serving Jesus, the Son, it is necessary to allow the Holy Spirit
illuminate our lives so that it takes us and leads us into the presence of God.
What is needed for a man's heart to say the following?
Oh Jesus, Jesus, my beloved Lord,
Forgive me if I pronounce, out of love,
Your sacred name
A thousand times a day.
Burn, burn, oh love, inside my heart,
Burns with fervor night and day,
Until all the dross of earthly loves,
"Let me burn completely and disappear."
Those words sprang from the worshipful heart that Frederick W. had. Faber. This man was completely fascinated by the things he had. experienced in the presence and communion of their loving God and Salvador. His heart possessed an intense moral emotion. Frederick I felt overwhelmed by the astonishment of the inconceivable magnitude and the moral splendor of the being we call our God.
That fascination towards God necessarily has an element of worship. In this context, you might want to ask me for a definition. of worship. I will answer this question by saying that when we adore God, all the beautiful ingredients of worship they reach a white point of incandescent heat produced by the fire of the Holy Spirit. To worship God means that we love Him with all our inner being; we love it with fear, wonder, desire and fascination. The admonition given by Jesus in Matthew 22:37, which tells us to love the Lord your God with all your heart... and with all your "mind", can only mean one thing; it means that we worship it.
I use the term 'worship' very sparingly because it is a word beautiful. I love children and people but I can't say that I I adore because I reserve worship for the only one who deserves it. I don't...
I can kneel before any other being or in any other presence with a reverent fear, with the wonder and longing that I they make me feel such a deep sense of belonging that I can exclaim: 'mine,' mine
They may change the words of the anthems, but every time a a man or a woman of God fully dedicate themselves to worship, they will exclaim: "God, my God are You; I will seek You in the morning" (Psalm 63:1). Worship becomes a completely personal love between God and the worshiper. That is what happened with David, Isaiah, and Paul. And it's the same that happens with all those whose desire is to possess God. This is the wonderful truth: God is my God.
Brother or sister in Christ, you can only say we, with true meaning, after having said God and I. It is impossible that you know what it is to love the people of this planet if you have not found with God in the solitude of his soul; that is, when only you and God–as if there were no one else in the world.
Those who have written about the devoted Canadian woman named Santa Anne, they have said that: "She talks to God as if there were no no one else, except the Lord, and as if He had no other children, except for her." In reality, it's not that she is a selfish woman, but that has managed to find the pleasure and meaning that characterize the experience of those who pour out their personal devotion and worship at the feet of the Lord.
Devoting oneself is not a difficult task for those who have had a true encounter with God. A son of the Lord who knows the adoration and genuine fascination, only longs to have the opportunity to pour out your heart at the feet of your Savior. In a On one occasion, a young man talked to me about his spiritual life. He had been a Christian. for several years but I was worried because perhaps I wasn't fulfilling God's will for your life. He spoke to me about coldness. what was in his heart and the lack of spiritual power. I understood. that he was disillusioned and fearful of reaching a state in which his
my heart would harden. I gave him a word of encouragement that came from the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux: "My brother, the only heart The one who has hardened is the one who does not recognize that he has hardened.
The only person who is in spiritual drought is the one who does not recognize. that is in the middle of a drought. When we are worried about our coldness is the result of a longing that God has placed in our heart. God has not rejected us.
God places a longing and a need in our hearts and then respond to her; He does not mock us and flees. God asks us to let's search for their face in repentance and love and then we discover that all the fullness of his grace is waiting for us; and, by the grace of God, that is a promise for all human beings.
You have probably read something by Blaise Pascal, the famous seventeenth-century French scientist who has been considered one of the six greatest thinkers of all time. He was considered a genius in mathematics and his scientific work was very extensive. He was philosopher and writer but the best part is that one night he experienced a personal and overwhelming encounter with God that changed his life.
Pascal wrote a brief account of his on a piece of paper. experience; he folded the paper and placed it in a pocket next to his heart, apparently like a memory of what I had felt. Those who they were with him on the day of his death, they found the crumpled paper and spent. Pascal had written the following in his own hand:
From about ten thirty at night until twelve thirty. fire. Oh, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob; not the god of philosophers and wise men. The God of Jesus Christ who can only be known on the paths of the gospel. Security, feeling, peace, joy, tears of joy. Amen.
Were those the words of a fan or an extremist? No. The mind Pascal was one of the brightest. But the living God had burst in and penetrated everything that was human, intellectual, and philosophical
in the essence of this man. Pascal, amazed, could only describe it in a the word the visitation he received in his spirit: "fire".
Understand that this was not a statement amidst many sentences. so that people could read it; it was the expression of ecstasy coming from of a man surrendering for two astonishing hours in the presence of his God. There was no kind of human engineering or manipulation at that moment. There was only amazement, fascination and adoration produced by the presence of the Holy Spirit of God while Pascal adored.
What we need among us is a genuine visitation of Spirit. We need that in the people of God be imparted a spirit of worship.