Let Us Worship by Judson Cornwall

Author:Judson Cornwall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion/Christian Life Spiritual Growth
ISBN: 9781458798107
Publisher: Bridge-Logos Publishers
Published: 2009-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

11

The Holy Spirit and Worship

I stood on the platform at a conference some years ago as the congregation released themselves to worship God in a way with which I was uncomfortable. I watched for a few moments and soon realized that they had come into a depth of sincerity and expression beyond my experience levels and I could not honestly reject it. Nonetheless, I could not participate in it from my inner being; I could only conform to their outer actions.

“I don’t know how to worship!” I cried to the Lord.

“But I do,” the Holy Spirit seemed to respond within me, “And I’ll teach you, if you’ll let Me.”

I must confess that I didn’t learn to worship their way during that one service, for I found that learning is a progressive work of the Holy Spirit. Patient teacher that He is, He leads us progressively from where we are to where we should be in our worship. Throughout the months that followed, I would rise to a level of worship and find some invisible force hindering me from entering a higher level. I would see into the things of the Lord, and my heart would want to respond in adoration, but somehow I couldn’t get the words out of my mouth; I just couldn’t release my emotions. There was something between me and the God I deeply desired to respond to. Having already confessed any known sin in my life and not being aware of any wrong attitudes, I stood facing this invisible barrier completely stymied.

I was, and still am, convinced that anytime there is something between me and God in the time of worship, that that hindrance will never be on God’s side, for there is absolutely nothing in God that prevents our worshipping Him. Nothing! That meant that the barrier was within me and I did not know what it was.

Sharing this with others has convinced me that my experience is not unique; they, too, have faced this invisible barrier to worship. Is not this the reason that God put His own Spirit within our hearts, to enable us to cry, “Abba, Father?” God knows what changes are necessary on man’s side, rather than on His side, to make worshippers out of us, so by living within man’s spirit, God is able to help us to overcome the barriers to worship that may be sin-generated, culturally-induced, or religiously ingrained in us. Our training in life and religion have predetermined our responses to God, and our spirit has set up an automatic veto in our memory circuits so that the moment we seek to go beyond that ban our minds flash “does not compute” back to us. The Holy Spirit, working from within, begins to reprogram our conscious and subconscious minds to release us to worship God in fresh new ways.

It is to be expected, then, that Jesus would tell the woman at the well that the worshippers “...shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth ... God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23, 24).

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