For the week of: Monday, August 6th 2007

"The Worshipers God Seeks"

I am enormously blessed to be surrounded by incredible women who refuse to settle for less than deep intimacy with Father.  They refuse to remain unchanged when the Spirit grips their hearts and whispers to them of the need for changed lives.  They stand firm upon the promise that His love is unfailing and they take very, very seriously the concept of life as worship.  As a result, we often share passionate conversations about how desperately we desire to be pleasing to God in our life worship and in our corporate worship when we meet as His church to encourage each other and lift hearts and hands in praise.  

These have not been incidental, off-the-cuff conversations.  No, they have been complete with hot tears running down cheeks and dripping off chins, heads bowed low in humility and prayers offered from throats choked with emotion.  This is not your run-of-the-mill disquiet with the old ways and a yearning for something new. 

Here’s the opening paragraph of a message I sent to one of my soul sisters last week:

Last night I was studying for a teaching and was re-reading the story of the woman at the well in John 4 and was stopped...alarmed would be more appropriate...by this staggering phrase in the middle of the text (vs 23): "Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks."  For some reason, and I believe as much as I believe that God is God, I felt the press of the Spirit on my heart to the point of involuntarily pressing my hand over my mouth and with tears streaming down my cheeks calling out to God from the depths of my soul..."I want to be the kind of worshiper you seek; please, please show me how."  

I don’t know why those 10 words in the middle of the text had remained undisclosed to me before, but on the night I read them with fresh eyes, I was crushed in heart, truly I was.  If God is seeking, I‘m tellin’ you, I want to be found! 

My “kind of worship” will not be found in any book on worship environments, although those books have an important place in teaching concepts.  My “kind of worship” will not be identified by the style of music I prefer, the lighting I like, the drama I am drawn to, or the preacher at whose feet I choose to sit.

I am praying for God to show me the kind of worshiper He seeks.  

I am drawn to two lines from an old hymn, words below….”Teach me ever to adore Thee; May I still Thy goodness prove.”  I am in the business of proving the goodness of God.  I AM the church.  You, dear believer, ARE the church and every time we prove the goodness of God by our selfless, compassionate, loving behavior, we are worshipping.  All week long…in the line at Wal-Mart as we encourage a young, tired momma, at the breakfast table as we interact with our children, when I hold my husband’s hand as he prays , when we help clean the kitchen up at a friend’s house after a great meal, when we pray over a sick child, when we swim with the neighborhood kids, bring a coloring book to a child in the hospital, put our arm around a struggling brother or sister and whisper words of love…this is worship…and so, as my friend Linda says, when we walk into the church building on Sunday, my worship time there is just an extension of what I’ve been doing all week.

Dear one, as we move through this new week, let’s you and I seek intimacy with Him.  Let’s seek it as we awake, as we eat, as we drive in the car, as we work, as we vacuum, as we shower, as we play with our babies and then, as we come together in corporate worship, what sweet worship we will experience as an extension of our worship life. 

Come thou fount of every blessing,

Tune my heart to sing Thy grace.

Streams of mercy never ceasing,

Call for songs of loudest praise.

Teach me ever to adore Thee,

May I still Thy goodness prove.

While the hope of endless glory

Fills my heart with joy and love.

From One Captured Heart To Another,

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