Ranting About Worship

Worship is always a natural response to something that is already true. It's not something that is demanded nor can be demanded to be worship. Worship happens because of a realization of God. God is not in need of anything but is eternally self-giving out of His attributes or who he is. 

Toward the end of his ministry Dr. A.W. Tozer commented that the war was lost, referring to the atrocious invasion of the world into the church. He objected to anemic Christianity. “In many churches,” Tozer complained, “Christianity has been watered down until the solution is so weak that if it were poison it would not hurt anyone, and if it were medicine it would not cure anyone!”

No Magic Formula

Remember, there is no magic in faith or in names. You can name the name of Jesus a thousand times; but if you will not follow the nature of Jesus the name of Jesus will not mean anything to you. We cannot worship God and live after our own nature. It is when God’s nature and our nature begin to harmonize that the power of the name of God begins to operate within us. As it was said so quaintly of Samson that “the Spirit of the Lord began to move him at times in the camp of Dan” (Judges 13:25), I believe that God’s people ought to be moved at times to true worship. But we cannot pray toward the east and walk toward the west and then hope for harmony in our being. We cannot pray in love and live in hate and still think we are worshiping God.

Let us suppose we are back in the old days of the high priest, who took incense into the sanctum and went behind the veil and offered it there. And let us suppose that rubber—the worst-smelling thing I can think of when it burns—had been available in those days. Let us suppose that chips of rubber had been mixed with the incense, so that instead of the pure smoke of the spices filling the temple with sweet perfume, there had been the black, angry, rancid smell of rubber mixed with it. How could a priest worship God by mixing with the sweet-smelling ingredients some foul ingredient that would be a stench in the nostrils of priest and people?

So how can we worship God acceptably when there is within our nature something that, when it catches on fire, gives off not a fragrance but a smell? How can we hope to worship God acceptably when there is something in our nature which is undisciplined, uncorrected, unpurged, unpurified—which is evil and which will not and cannot worship God acceptably?

So I’ve got to tell you that if you do not worship God seven days a week, you do not worship Him on one day a week. There is no such thing known in heaven as Sunday worship unless it is accompanied by Monday worship and Tuesday worship and so on.

Too many of us discharge our obligations to God Almighty in one day, usually by a trip to church. Sometimes nobly we make it two trips to church. But it’s all on the same day when we’ve nothing else to do—and that is supposed to be worship. And a Mid-week service is fast becoming something a relic of the past. Three times in one week are you crazy? Don't you know I have Karate practice, gymnastics, baseball, soccer, football, and baseball practice? Not to mention, my favorite reality show is on Wednesday night.

I mean, you don’t really need to be in church—you can worship God at your desk...Our Lord Himself went to the synagogue or the temple, as His custom was, on the Sabbath day. Other days He was a carpenter and worked and shaved and sawed and drove nails with His supposed father.

We can go to church and worship. But if we go to church and worship one day it’s not true worship unless it is followed by worship six days after that till the next Sabbath comes. We must never rest until everything inside us worships God.