These
worksheets are for using in small groups in the church. Please feel
free to copy and paste them and use them in such groups.
A.
Preliminary Considerations
Before
going down the page to Part B, please complete the following self-awareness
exercises with at least one other person:
Exercise
1: Tick one statement that most accurately describes what stands
out most in what you feel about our worship as a church:
I
like our worship just as it is
I
feel slightly awkward with our worship
I
long for more from our worship
I
wish I could be more expressive in our worship
Exercise
2: State why you have chosen that one above:
............................
.
............................
.
Exercise
3: Read the meditation, God of joyful presence. (see bottom
of page) What does that meditation say to you?
...........................
.
...........................
.
Exercise
4: In addition to anything you may have written above, how
might the idea of the God of joyful presence help you or your understanding
of worship, do you think?
..........................
..
...........................
..
B.
Introduction
The
purpose of these notes is simply to observe some of the ways of coming
before God that are shown in the Old Testament. By doing this we may
come to realise that there are many more ways to express ourselves before
the Lord than perhaps we usually do.
In
coming to God we can come:
- Spontaneously
- carefree
response to a rising within
- as
we praise or thank, the Holy Spirit brings an inner witness of
the truth of what we are saying or singing and this releases within
us this sense of bowing before the Lord and acknowledging His
greatness, i.e. worship
- Purposefully,
an act of will
- a
decision to worship even when no one else is worshipping!
- because
we are not always the bright Spirit-filled people we might wish
to be, we sometimes have to create the formwork' of worship and
let the Lord fill it with the real thing.
it is therefore, an act of the will to put
ourselves in this place.
1.
Exalting
Exalt
the LORD our God and worship at his footstool; he is holy. (Psa
99:5)
worship
= to bow down before and lift up
2.
Praising
Praise
the LORD, O my soul. O LORD my God, you are very great; you are clothed
with splendor and majesty. Psa 104:1
praise
= to applaud someone for a quality they have, to exalt them
Sing
praises to God Psa 47:6
3.
Thanking
I
thank and praise you, O God of my fathers: You have given me wisdom
and power Dan 2:23
thank
= show appreciation for something given or done
NB.
We could also include Asking' but that is different from the things
we've included here which are all toward God', i.e. included in our
thinking about the process of worshipping.
C.
How we can do it vocally
1.
Singing
Sing
to the LORD a new song, for he has done marvelous things Psa
98:1
Singing
may be an expression of praise or thanks leading to worship
2.
Shouting
shout
to God with cries of joy Psa 47:1
shout
= a forceful expression of praise or worship
3.
Crying Out
Then
they cried out to the LORD. The priests blew their trumpets and the
men of Judah raised the battle cry 2 Chron 13:14 ,15
cry
out = a forceful request or a forceful declaration
4.
Calling On
But
I call to God, and the LORD saves me. Psa 55:16
call
= to appeal loudly
NB.
This time we have included vocal expressions that may appear requests,
but in this context they are expressions that involve lifting up the
Lord by the very nature of them, and therefore can come into our considerations
of worship.
D.
How we can do it Bodily
1.Sitting
Never
used of worship, praise or thanksgiving in Scripture
Possibly
this is because it is a passive act
2.
Standing
All
the men of Judah , with their wives and children and little ones,
stood there before the LORD. 2 Chron 20:13
Standing
= a passive presenting of self before the Lord, waiting on the Lord
3.
Bowing Down
Come,
let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker
Psa 95:6
We
bow as an active expression of worship, acknowledgement of superiority
4.
Clapping
Clap
your hands, all you nations Psa 47:1
to
clap = to applaud, give praise to, to extol
this
is not clapping along with the music but a specific expression of
appreciation
5.
Falling Down
Then
the LORD opened Balaam's eyes, and he saw the angel of the LORD standing
in the road with his sword drawn. So he bowed low and fell facedown.
Num 22:31
Falling
prostrate = an act of humble submission
Lying
face down can be a very real expression of submission in worship.
6.
Lifting Hands
Lift
up your hands in the sanctuary and praise the LORD.
Psa 134:2
Lifting
hands maybe a sign of:
- awareness
of holiness almost a shielding from God's glory
- presenting
clean hands declaring righteousness
- reaching
up recognizing need to draw near
- testifying
affirming our position
.................................................................
Preparation
for Worship? : God of joyful presence
Psa
21:6 Surely you have granted him eternal blessings and made him
glad with the joy of your presence.
There
are two bad attitudes expressed within the human race. The first is
to deny the existence of the Lord (that's the atheist), and the second
is to attribute to Him wrong or bad attributes. It is the latter one
we want to deal with here. There are many people, and this really does
include Christians, who have a negative view of God. They see Him as
a hard God (Lk 19:21) or a harsh God (Mal 3:13 ). They are contemptuous
about God (Mal 1:6) by the way they live, indicating they believe He
is an absent Lord, and they're glad.
Wrong
understanding of God is very common and it may be that we have such
attitudes because of the things that happened to us before we came to
know Him, things that harmed or hurt us, things that came from a fallen
world, or things that came through our own sinful foolishness, and because
of that sinful foolishness, we never (then) turned to the Lord for help.
Thus we had a bad view of life and subsequently (and subconsciously)
of God. We even attribute the way we think to the way we think God thinks.
We are not charitable and so we cannot understand God being charitable.
We are not forgiving so we find it difficult to believe that God is
forgiving. We expect people to work to achieve acceptance, so we believe
God wants us to work to achieve His acceptance. In all these ways, we
have wrong ideas!
The
truth is displayed here by David and it needs thinking about. First
of all he says, Surely you have granted him eternal blessings,
referring to himself. Eternal blessings? Yes, things from heaven that
are unlimited in their life. If we give a Christmas present it normally
has a limited life and may be broken or thrown away within months or
years. The good things that God gives, do not have a shelf life', they
go on and on and on and on. They are eternal because they come from
an eternal God. Because of who they were, Israel were automatically
blessed as God's covenant people (Deut 33:29 & Psa 33:12). Blessing,
goodness from God, was part of the package of their relationship with
the Lord. Many times in the Old and New Testaments we come across the
words, Blessed is the man who
. e.g. Psa 89:15 Blessed are
those who have learned to acclaim you, who walk in the light of your
presence. To be blessed means to have received all the goodness
of God, and that comes over in Scripture many times as we just said.
Many times the Bible tells us we can receive this goodness that makes
us happy, and the Psa 85 quote tells us that we will be really happy
when we walk in the light of God's presence, and that has echoes of
our verse above - glad with the joy of your presence.
These
verses tell us that it is a wonderful thing to be in the Lord's presence,
a joyful thing. We sometimes use C.S.Lewis's book The Lion, the Witch
and the Wardrobe' to illustrate spiritual truths, with Aslan the Lion
picturing Jesus. When three of the children first hear Aslan's name
mentioned, they each have lovely thoughts and feelings, even though
they don't know who he is yet. Lewis understood this truth we see in
this verse, that actually knowing God, being in His presence, even thinking
about His presence when you have a right understanding, is a most wonderfully
joyful thing. Why? Because He is love, He is utterly good, and so it's
a lovely thing to be in the presence of such a Being - well it is if
you have turned your heart to love and goodness and towards Him then
it will be THE most wonderful thing possible this being in His presence'!
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