Worship That Transforms; Part One

I know, the Bible commands it, God desires it, we were created for it; but all of these reasons are a little like saying that we eat only because our bodies need food to survive. This may be true, but what we eat, how we eat, and the effect that our eating has on our lives goes much deeper than just the act of survival. So, too, our worship goes far deeper than just obeying a Biblical command or responding to some in-built human drive – or at least it should.

I have a disturbing hunch that many of us “worship” because the band is really hot, or the preacher is phenomenal, or our friends are going to be there. We worship because it makes us feel better, and gives us a sense that God cares for us. We worship because it inspires us and energizes us to make it through the week until we can return for another boost to keep us going.

But, if God commands us to worship, I wonder if we can grasp what God is hoping for from our worship? In truth, it doesn’t take much to understand what God longs for in worship, because the Bible gives us so many glimpses. As the apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 3:18, as we gaze on the Lord’s glory, so we are transformed into that glory. God is in the business of transformation – that’s the basic message of the Gospel. And transformation is really the only way we can judge how real and “effective” our worship really is.

So, how does God transform us through our worship? What is God doing to change us, and how can we co-operate with this work of God? Here’s the first of five suggestions for opening us, and the people we lead, to God’s transforming work as we gather for worship each week.

Apocalyptic Worship:
In the book of Revelation, we find John, the apostle, sentenced to solitary confinement on the island of Patmos. Although he was in prison, John chose to be “in the Spirit” on “the Lord’s day” (See Rev. 1:9-12). Basically, he’s telling us that he was in worship one Sunday, and in the midst of this private worship service, John finds himself carried away by a grand vision. The rest of the book, then, is the description of this revelation that came to John as he worshipped God.
Our word ‘apocalypse’ comes from the Greek apokalupsis which means revelation. In this sense, the worship of John that day on Patmos was ‘apocalyptic’ – it was worship that revealed something. What was revealed is simply explained in the introduction to the book – it was the ‘revelation of Jesus Christ’ (Revelation 1:1).

Here we get an indication from the Bible of one of the primary purposes of our worship. God longs to be known by us. The Scriptures are the story of this self-revelation of God to humanity, and they reveal throughout that people often encountered God in the place and the act of worship. There is no reason that this should be any different for us today. While our revelations may be far less dramatic in form than that of a John or a Moses, they certainly need be no less significant in terms of their impact on our lives.

What the book of revelation indicates is that in worship God seeks to give new understandings of God’s nature, character and purposes. In the sanctuary, God seeks to reveal something of God’s perspective on the world and its affairs. And in our prayers, rituals and music, God offers resources that can be carried out into the world as we seek to live our worship in the midst of daily routine. Worship is to be apocalyptic.

The question this raises is a practical one – how do we ensure that our worship opens us to this revelation of God? Here are some suggestions, but feel free to comment and add more.

Worship becomes apocalyptic when we move beyond a purely cognitive, rational experience. It is easy in worship to focus on our heads – what we think and say, what we understand. There is a place for this, but worship cannot end here. For worship to shift into a revelatory experience, it needs to be just that – an experience. Emotions, intuition, mystery, symbol, metaphor and all the senses need to become part of the worship experience. Our sacraments, the poetry of the liturgy, the symbols in our windows and banners, the parables of Christ and the images of our songs all help to move us into a deeper knowing, a whole-person encounter with God that opens us to new inspiration, new experience and new understandings of God.

When worship allows this revelation to happen, worshippers become used to recognising God’s presence even in the most unlikely places. When that happens, the whole world becomes a different place, and the way we live in the world changes as well. This is the change God longs for, and, once we’ve experienced it, we see it as the change we need – the change that draws us back into worship to learn more and be change more, and to live as those who change the world for the sake of Christ.

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Related posts:

1. Together-ness: The Worship Band is my Small Group
2. How You Worship Defines How You Live
3. Should Worship Be Fun?
4. Worship…..the Fuel for Ministry?
5. Uniformity In Worship