Submitted with love to my brothers and sisters.
Perhaps it's time for a Worship merit?
Many times I see boys at council fires who really don't understand the
intimacy or power of true worship. They look to us. Perhaps it is we who
don't truly understand?
Matt Redman is the gifted worship leader from the UK who wrote "Better is
One Day", "Let My Words be Few", and the incredible "Heart of Worship."
===================================================================
At Worship Together Magazine, you can find General Interest, How-To and
Inspirational articles, along with Interviews of Worship Leaders and Worship
News articles.
THE UNQUENCHABLE WORSHIPPER (Part 1)
Date Posted : 8/20/2001
Subject : Worship
Author : Matt Redman
Link : http://www.heartofworship.com
Enter the unquenchable worshipper. This world is full of fragile loves�love
that abandons, love that fades, love that divorces, love that is
self-seeking. But the unquenchable worshipper is different. From a heart so
amazed by God and His wonders burns a love that will not be extinguished. It
survives any situation and lives through any circumstance. It will not allow
itself to be quenched, for that would heap insult on the love it lives in
response to. These worshippers gather beneath the shadow of the Cross, where
an undying devotion took the Son of God to His death. Alive now in the power
of His resurrection, they respond to such an outpouring with an unquenchable
offering of their own.
The Bible is full of unquenchable worshippers�people who refused to be
dampened, discouraged or distracted in their quest to glorify God. I love
the heart attitude of the prophet Habakkuk, who decided he would choose to
respond to God�s worth, no matter how bleak a season he found himself in:
Though the fig-tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are
no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the
LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior (Habakkuk 3:17,18).
In Acts 16, Paul and Silas also resolve to overcome less than favorable
conditions and worship God. Sitting in their jail cell, they could be
forgiven for not being in the mood for singing. They had been unjustly
arrested, beaten, severely flogged and thrown into the deepest part of the
prison, with their feet in stocks. Yet, somehow, Paul and Silas found it in
themselves to sing out praise to God. Refusing to let their souls be
dampened, they worshipped with everything they had left.
Most of us don�t own fig trees and haven�t been imprisoned for being
Christians, but the principle is the same for us as it was for Habakkuk,
Paul and Silas: We can always find a reason to praise. Situations change for
better and for worse, but God�s worth never changes. I recently heard the
story of Fanny Crosby, the American hymn writer who lived during the
nineteenth century. She described a life-changing incident that happened to
her as a baby:
When about six weeks old I was taken sick and my eyes grew very weak and
those who had charge of me poulticed my eyes. Their lack of knowledge and
skill destroyed my sight forever. As I grew older they told me I should
never see the faces of my friends, the flowers of the field, the blue of the
skies, or the golden beauty of the stars. . . . Soon I learned what other
children possessed, but I made up my mind to store away a little jewel in my
heart which I called �Content.�
In fact, Fanny Crosby was only eight years old when she wrote this song: O
what a happy soul am I! Although I cannot see, I am resolved that in this
world Contented I will be. How many blessings I enjoy, That other people
don�t. To weep and sigh because I�m blind, I cannot, and I won�t.
This contented worshipper went on to write around 8,000 hymns of praise.
Those thousands of songs were simply the result of a fire that burned in her
heart for Jesus and could not be put out. Someone once asked her, �Fanny, do
you wish you had not been blinded?� She replied, in typical style, �Well,
the good thing about being blind is that the very first face I�ll see will
be the face of Jesus.�
Many people might have chosen the path of bitterness and complaint as their
response to God; but she chose the path of contentment and praise. The
choice between these two paths faces us each day, with every situation
that�s thrown our way. Bitterness dampens and eventually destroys love for
God. It eats away at the statement �God is love� and tells us He is not
faithful. But contentment does the opposite: It fuels the heart with endless
reasons to praise God.
And there are endless reasons to praise Him. I once heard Pete Waterman (of
the production team Stock, Aitken and Waterman) talking about love songs in
the world of pop music. He cynically suggested that you can write only four
songs��I love you,� �I hate you,� �Go away,� and �Come back.� I�m thankful,
as someone who writes worship songs, that there�s a lot more songwriting
material to get your heart into than that! I�ll never be able to think,
Right, that�s God pretty much wrapped up . . . what shall I write about
next? The brightness of His glory and the wonders of His heart will no doubt
have us pouring out new songs for all eternity. At the end of Song of Songs
comes a fantastic declaration of unquenchable worship: Love is as strong as
death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire,
like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it
away (Song of Songs 8:6,7).
Too often my worship is tamed by the complications and struggles of this
world. But I long to be in a place where my fire for God cannot be quenched
or washed away, even by the mightiest rivers of opposition�I long for a
worship that can never be extinguished. Fire extinguishers work by removing
one of the three things needed to keep a fire ablaze: heat, oxygen and fuelSo, in
other words, there are three main ways to put a fire out: cool the
burning material with water (or some other such substance), cut off the
oxygen or cut off the supply of fuel.
And I think there�s a parallel here with our hearts of worship. We long to
be a people whose hearts burn for God; but if we�re not careful, there are
ways we can lose something of that fire.
First, just as water can put a fire out, so too the pressures and the trials
of this life can dampen our hearts of worship. It�s so easy in a time of
hardship to cool off a bit and lose that sense of wonder and trust. We ask
why God would let such things happen to us and we wind down our worship,
kidding ourselves that we�ll start up again when things are better. Or maybe
we don�t feel like worshipping anymore, so we don�t. I�ve seen many
worshippers thrown off course by difficult situations. But I�ve also seen
people who have endured even more difficult situations and emerged with
their hearts of worship burning as strongly as ever, if not stronger.
There is a kind of worshipper who �always trusts, always hopes, always
perseveres� (1 Corinthians 13:7), and who gets through the storms of life
with a heart still blazing. Sometimes it comes down to a simple choice. We
may be hard-pressed on every side, weary and not able to sense God. But then
a choice faces us�to fix our eyes on the circumstances or to cling to God
and choose to worship Him, even when it hurts. The heart of God loves the
offerings of a persevering worshipper. Though overwhelmed by many troubles,
they are even more overwhelmed by the beauty of God.
The second way to extinguish a fire is to cut off the oxygen. In worship
terms this means to quench the Holy Spirit. It�s plain from the Bible that
we worship by the Holy Spirit (see Philippians 3:3); but it�s also clear
that the Holy Spirit can be grieved. Ephesians 4:30 urges us: �Do not grieve
the Holy Spirit of God.� Then it tells us some of the ways not to grieve
Him: �Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger� (v. 31). The implications
of this are huge. Take our church services, for example. We talk a lot about
Spirit-led worship, but if we truly want to be led by the Holy Spirit, we
need to make sure we�re keeping in step with Him in our everyday lives. As a
worship leader this is a challenging and even scary thought. I need to make
sure that I�m making my life an appropriate dwelling place for Him. An
unquenchable, burning worshipper needs to be full of the Holy Spirit. The
third way of stopping a fire is to cut off the fuel it thrives on. If you�ve
ever watched TV footage of a forest fire, you may have noticed the
firefighters burn or chop away a whole section of forest so that when the
fire reaches that place it cannot spread any further.
The revelation of God is the fuel for the fire of our worship. And there is
always more fuel for the fire. When we open the eyes of our hearts, God�s
revelation comes flying at us from so many different angles. He has revealed
Himself to us in creation, throughout the history of His people and
overwhelmingly at the Cross. And to this day, every breath we breathe is a
reminder of our maker, and every hour holds the possibility of living in His
presence. We simply need to keep putting ourselves in a place where we�re
likely to receive this revelation. The heart of worship is fueled by
essential things, such as reading God�s Word, praying to Him and going to
church to share fellowship together. There are other ways too, such as
getting out into nature�the ocean, mountains or just a field�to soak our
souls in the wonder of our creator.
To be continued�
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