From my YET-TO-BE-PUBLISHED book, NAKED WORSHIP CHAPTER SEVEN : WORSHIP—A TOTALLY AWESOME ENCOUNTER! When Moses was alive, these pyramids were a thousand years old. Here began the history of architecture. Here people learned to measure time by a calendar, to plot the stars by astronomy and chart the earth by geometry. And here they developed that most awesome of all ideas - the idea of eternity. —Walter Cronkite Jacob…stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the LORD, and he said: “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac…I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.” Early the next morning Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. He called that place Bethel (Genesis 28:10-19 NIV). The word “awesome” has become so hackneyed, cliché and overworked, that I am hesitant to use it. When Walter Cronkite in the above quote said, “And here they developed that most awesome of all ideas—the idea of eternity,” he came closer than most to capturing its meaning. When Arthur Conan Doyle stated, “There was something awesome in the thought of the solitary mortal standing by the open window and summoning in from the gloom outside the spirits of the nether world,” he too used the word with approximate appropriateness. However, when Steve Zahn said, “My sister gave me a big bucket of Cool Whip. Isn’t that awesome? For two weeks I basically watched Emergency! and ate cool whip with a spoon,” his usage mirrored the more common parlance of our day. If watching Emergency on television while eating Cool Whip is awesome, I am at a loss to find an appropriate superlative to substitute for the word used in the above passage of Scripture. I will appeal to my dictionary, my thesaurus, and to the Hebrew text for illumination. The dictionary defines awesome as inspiring awe as in an awesome thunderstorm, or as expressing awe as in stood in awesome silence before the ancient ruins. The thesaurus offers these words as substitutes: amazing, alarming, astonishing, awe-inspiring, awful, beautiful, breathtaking, daunting, dreadful, exalted, fearful, fearsome, formidable, frantic, frightening, grand, horrible, horrifying, imposing, impressive, intimidating, magnificent, majestic, mind-blowing, moving, overwhelming, shocking, striking, stunning, stupefying, terrible, terrifying, wonderful, and wondrous. The Hebrew word used here was yare. Most commonly it was used to mean: to fear, revere, to be afraid, to stand in awe of, be awed, to reverence, honor, respect, to be dreadful, to cause astonishment and awe, be held in awe, to inspire reverence or godly fear or awe, to make afraid, or to terrify. Many hundreds of years ago when tyrants ruled over China, a summons to appear in the emperor’s court in Peking’s Forbidden City made even strong men tremble. Any visitor was expected to perform the required complicated kneeling and prostrations faultlessly as he came into the presence of the tyrant. The slightest violation could bring a sentence of instant death. To gaze at the emperor was forbidden. To speak out hastily was fatal. It meant absolute and instantaneous death. Upon receiving a summons to appear before the emperor, Chinese officials frequently would say their last farewells to their friends and their families, so slim were their chances of surviving the royal audience. And yet, when we worship our Lord and Savior, we are summoned into the presence of the King of kings. How awesome! We are assured in Scripture that the God whom we are invited to approach in worship is “God, the blessed and only ruler, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who alone is immortal, and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen” (I Timothy 6:15-16 NIV). Dr. V.R. Edman, then chancellor of Wheaton College, was addressing chapel in 1967 on the subject of worship. He illustrated his message by describing how he had followed the proper protocol many years before when he had been granted an audience with the King of Ethiopia. He compared the worship service in chapel to a meeting between the King of Kings and each individual student. While offering to the students in chapel various ways they could make their worship encounter more meaningful, Dr. Edman’s speech suddenly stopped as he slumped to the floor, suffering a fatal heart attack. He had been summoned into the presence of the King of Kings. I wonder if we really comprehend what it means to be in the presence of God. I greatly cherish my own Pentecostal extraction and roots. But often as I have pondered this question, I have reflected upon the casualness that we have cultivated in our tradition in an effort to encourage the “freedom of the Spirit.” Signs posted on the front lawns of two different churches in one neighborhood announced, “Casual worship.” While the intention is to attract people by letting them know they can be comfortable, the sign’s message poses a perturbing question. Can any meeting between mankind and the creator of the universe be casual? The Lord of Heaven invites us to offer praise and worship and be transformed by His redemptive grace. Can one be casual about this without falling into a reduced view of God? And when worship succumbs to scratching the consumer’ itch—so they get what they want—doesn’t it risk placing human wishes and comfort at the center of worship—where God belongs? In attempting to appeal to a cross-section of the community, one church posted a sign that read, “We are traditional at 8 a.m. We are contemporary at 9 a.m. We are blended at 11 a.m.” Another ran an advertisement in the newspaper: “We are charismatic in our worship, Baptist in our preaching, and Episcopal at the table.” In today’s technologically sophisticated society many church leaders have felt constrained to try to offer up a more contemporary Sunday fare, and have succumbed to the seduction of creating a form of Christian entertainment. Partly as a result of the Church Growth Movement, and to appeal to the media-maddened masses, many churches have developed a market-driven obsession with meeting the felt needs of religious consumers. In many such instances, it seems that the gospel has been diluted to a religious commodity marketed to semi-spiritual-seekers on some vaguely spiritual quest. Welcome to prime-time worship! It’s snappy, it has a beat, and you can dance to it. Samuele Bacchiocchi, Professor of Theology at Andrews University states in an article entitled, Worship Wars, in Endtime Issues No. 48, 23 June 2000, “The outcome is that the church becomes a place where people can experience physical stimulation and worship becomes an exercise to experience personal gratification rather than divine glorification.” In an essay distributed by the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, and published on the website, Get Religion, church musician Leonard Payton states, “In the most extreme cases, some worship services are merely sanitized rock concerts, i.e., no foul language and no cloud of marijuana smoke up at the ceiling.” “The whole world of mainstream evangelicalism is turning into an FM radio dial packed with consumer niches” according to Terry Mattingly. Mattingly, in an article entitled, Worship for Sale, Worship for Sale, and posted on his internet column, On Religion, quotes pollster George Barna who talked with Protestant pastors, worship leaders and other church professionals and discovered that 90 percent of the conflicts reporting in their congregations were rooted in music. What we know about Americans is that we view ourselves first and foremost as consumers,” said Barna. “Even when we walk in the doors of our churches what we tend to do is to wonder how can I get a good transaction out of this experience. So, what we know from our research is that Americans have made worship something that primarily that we do for ourselves. Worship is successful when we feel good. Some critics of the most contemporary form of church music have referred to it as a new erotic-worship genre. Writing in Touchstone magazine, senior editor S.M. Hutchens sees all sorts of dangers in contemporary church services that emphasize performers and egocentric lyrics. Hutchens begins his essay, “Please Me, O Lord,” by describing what he witnessed during his return to an evangelical congregation: On a recent visit to a fairly typical Evangelical church, we were treated to one of its regular features. A handsome young woman, attractively dressed, stood before the congregation with an eight-inch microphone, the head of which she held gently to her lips while she writhed and cooed a song in which she, with closed eyes and beckoning gestures, begged Jesus, as she worked her way toward its climax, to come fill her emptiness. The crowd liked it. The joy of the Lord is of prime value in our worship, but sometimes our joviality can produce a jocularity, levity and lightness that is not conducive to the awesome seriousness of the worship encounter. Is it possible that God is offended and the Holy Spirit grieved by our less than serious approach to an encounter with God? Isaiah tells us the story of his rather awesome worship encounter: In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke (Isaiah 6:1-4 NIV). A totally awesome experience indeed! Even those angels that have never sinned cover their faces and feet in His presence! He is the thrice-holy One. It is that attribute of God that we must not negate in our emphasis upon His love and grace. To be summoned into His presence to worship before His throne is an awesome privilege. In Worship: The Missing Jewel of the Evangelical Church, Dr. A.W. Tozer said, “Far too many believers hold a superficial view of God, resulting in emasculated worship through failure to ascribe to Him His proper magnificence.” What does it mean for God to be “awful” or “awesome?” Leslie Flynn in Worship: Together We Celebrate, writes: “Awe is essential in true worship. Transcendent wonder at God’s majesty gives a sense of inadequacy on the part of the worshipper whose weakness stands in vivid contrast to the infinite might of God.” One thousand years ago the word “awful” was used almost exclusively of God. Through common usage, the graphic term gradually degenerated until it was applied to any situation causing awe. By 1800, with the spelling modified, it came to mean “exceedingly great.” But the once potently powerful word for holy reverence is now debased to such phrases as “awful weather” or “awful pain.” The Septuagint translated “awful” as “fearful, terrible and dreadful.” In its verb form, to “awe” means to fear reverently. Awe characterized the worship of the Old Testament saints of God. Abraham fell on his face in holy wonderment when God spoke to him. The morning after Jacob’s “ladder experience” he exclaimed, “How awesome is this place” (Genesis 28:17 NIV), When Moses met with God at the burning bush, he was told to remove his shoes because of the holiness of the place. This scene is repeated over and again throughout the Bible, and is not limited to Old Testament worshippers. People who recognized Christ fell before Him in the same manner. This same spirit characterizes the worship of the Revelation, when we in redeemed and glorified bodies surround the throne of the Lord God and the Lamb. 1. THE PICTURE OF WORSHIP What can we learn from Jacob’s ladder experience that will make us better worshippers of God? In this passage there is infinitely more than what was contained in the chorus we used to sing in Sunday School, “We are climbing Jacob’s ladder” ! Rather, this passage gives us a very vivid portrait of worship. Jacob had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on earth with its top reaching into heaven. There were angels climbing up and down the ladder. This two-way escalator illustrates for us that worship is a dynamic duet rather than a one-way street. It is a two-way dialogue. God designed worship to be two-way. He desires to communicate with us more than we do with Him. In the rhythm of God, it is God Himself who takes the initiative towards us. He reveals something of His attributes and actions, and then the believer responds to the revelation of God. Worship is dialogue. God acts and speaks, and we respond to Him. In Jacob’s ladder, God initiates the process by giving Jacob a promise. Jacob responds with a vow. This is the dynamic flow of revelation and response. There is proclamation and dedication. God gives a promise, and Jacob makes a promise. There is heaven and earth entering into dialogue in this worship encounter. Whether in our corporate gatherings or our individual devotional time alone with God, worship is a divine, dynamic dialogue that happens between God and us. This dialogue is dramatically portrayed for us, and illustrates the awesome power of worship. Have you ever wondered why we call it “Jacob’s ladder”? It wasn’t really Jacob’s ladder! It was God’s ladder! It did not originate with Jacob. Jacob did not construct it. As clever and conniving as he was, Jacob could not build a ladder or a staircase that would reach into heaven. Earlier in the book of Genesis, mankind had tried to do this and had fallen under the judgment of God (Genesis 11: 1-9). The tower of Babel and Jacob’s ladder are one more illustration of the contrast between man’s way and God’s way in worship. Man’s way is attempting to reach up into heaven. It may be by a regimented lifestyle of good works. It may be by a systematized religious structure of ceremony and ritual. Or it may be by certain symbols and formalism. It may be by the wrong use of legitimate forms of worship. But if we see any of our activities, even though they may be Biblically based, as being able to bring us into the presence of God we have missed the mark. In some pockets of the charismatic and worship renewal, there has been an invalid interpretation of what it means to “enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise.” Praise and thanksgiving are not the vehicles that take us into the presence of God. Rather, they are the attitudinal responses by which we affirm that God HAS brought us into His presence. It is the blood of Jesus that has brought us in. We are in the presence of God by a new and living way. This way has been consecrated for us by our Lord Jesus Christ through the giving of His body on the cross. In that sacrifice He not only opened the way to God, but He has brought us into the presence of God. Since we are now in His presence, we draw near with full assurance of faith. We are in the holy of holies by virtue of the finished work of Calvary. We celebrate that fact when we praise and worship God! But we must never think that it is our praise or our worship that brings us in. Our praise enables us to sense, to realize, to experience, to appreciate, to recognize, and even to feel that presence. But in no sense of the word, do the works of our hands or the fruit of our lips convey us into the presence of God. Such teaching is legalism in one of its more subtle forms. Unfortunately, many times our efforts at worship are nothing more than our attempts to somehow engineer an escalator that can get us earthbound creatures off the ground and into the heavenlies! But God never intended that worship would be something that would originate in our efforts. That is why He has already seated us in the heavenlies in Christ. Worship enables us to comprehend this and enjoy the glory of its realization. God never intended that worship would begin in us, and through our abilities, enable us to build a ladder to reach into heaven. God hasn’t decreed our release from earthboundness through our own efforts in worship. It is to be His provision and His initiative! Worship, on our part, is our response to a loving God who, in the incarnation let down a ladder from heaven that reaches all the way to the lowest depth of this earth, and even into the depths of hell itself. That ladder is Jesus Christ. The rungs of that ladder were rooted in the soil of this earth. Jesus became “earthy” when God came down to man in the person of His Son. Not only did God come down to man, but through Jesus Christ we are able to ascend into the heavenlies in worship as we glorify and praise Him! God not only let down the ladder from heaven, but also constructed the staircase to heaven. Too often our worship is centered in our efforts to fabricate a staircase to reach into the heavens. As long as this is our focus, we will never discover the power of true worship. In the words of our Lord to Nathanael, there is the possible hint of a connection between His person and Jacob’s ladder when He said, I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man (John 1:51 NIV). Christ is Jacob’s ladder! He is our access to heaven! God has descended to us in Christ, and through Christ we are able to transcend our earthboundness in worship. In Christ we have heaven and earth met together. Just as Jacob’s ladder joined heaven and earth, so does Christ. It is as if He grasps the throne of God with one hand, and reaches down to the depths of hell with the other. And when we worship Christ, we can rise from the depths of our earthboundness and soar into heaven itself. Christ is our stairway to heaven, our median of worship. It is only through Him that our worship is acceptable to God. The writer to the Hebrews tells us, “Through Jesus therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of our lips that confess His name” (Hebrews 13:15 NIV). It is through Christ alone that we ascend into the heavenlies in our worship. Worship is an “uplifting” experience. God has come down in the person of His Son. He has let down His ladder from heaven. As we gather around Jesus and lift Him up in worship, somehow, wonderfully, mysteriously, we also are lifted up with Him. This is the uplift of worship. Worship is an up-lifting experience. Jacob’s ladder portrays this powerfully for us. When I was a little boy, I frequently dreamed that I could fly. Most people have probably had that same dream. Sometimes the dream seemed so real that I wanted to try it! Deep within each of us there is that urge to rid ourselves of our earthboundness. Worship can facilitate that. Worship is that which lifts us and launches us beyond the limitations of our physical realm. Everything looks so different when you fly. I probably fly over one hundred thousand miles every year. Frequently I leave for the airport when it’s dark, rainy, miserable, depressing! There’s bumper-to-bumper traffic, glaring headlights, wet pavement and irate drivers on the freeway. But when I get on that airplane and it soars up above all of that, I look out and see the city and all of its lights. I always find that when I board an aircraft and get a little distance between me and my day-to-day circumstances, everything looks different. All of my colossal problems somehow seem to diminish in their significance and are no longer so important. Worship can be such a transcending experience. God has designed it to be an awesome encounter with Himself wherein we are lifted above the confines of this world. 2. THE PERSON OF WORSHIP In this passage we discover more than just a picture of what worship can be. We not only soar above the limitations of earthboundness, nor do we merely behold God’s staircase. God is standing at the head of the stairs! Just as Jacob saw more than angels ascending and descending, worship is more than the ups and downs, more than the highs and lows of our finite experiences. When we ascend the staircase in worship we have an encounter with the Person of worship. It is God Himself. This revelation of God is both enlightening and instructive. He says “I am Jehovah, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac.” This, then, is the purpose of worship—the revelation of God to us. He revealed Himself to Jacob as a covenant-keeping God as well as by His name Jehovah, the personal name of God that has to do with salvation. He revealed Himself as the giving God. He said, “I will give you and your descendants the land upon which you are lying.” He revealed Himself as the blessing God, “All peoples of the earth will be blessed because of you.” He revealed Himself as the personal, ever-present God, “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you” (Genesis 28:13-15). True worship not only draws near to God’s heart, but also discovers what is in His heart. True worship is meeting with God and getting to know His person, His character. For this reason He grants us an audience. He wants us to know Him. This is why He let down the ladder from heaven. In that ladder, called Jesus, we discover the Person of God, the Person of our worship. “No one has ever seen God, but God the only Son, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known” (John 1:18 NIV). Jesus said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father…Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in Me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (John 14:9- 11 NIV). The writer to the Hebrews tells us that Jesus is the express image of God’s person. He is the precise and exact impress of His character. We have had revealed to us the very person of God in Christ. He is the brightness of God’s glory. In Him all of the divine fullness was manifested! Worship is more than the stirring of emotions. It is more than the creation of a nice feeling. It is not the liberation of the psyche. Worship is preoccupation with God. Jacob was so caught up in this experience that he described it as being awesome. Jacob describes this as being the house of God and the gate of heaven. Worship is meeting God and becoming involved and preoccupied with His person and presence. Unfortunately, the concept of God’s majesty has almost disappeared from our worship. In the Psalms, God is worshipped for His person in descriptive praise and for His work in declarative praise. There are three factors that animate the psalms of descriptive praise. They include His names, His incomparability, and His attributes. His power is seen in nature, so we worship Him. We see Him in creation, so we worship Him. We worship Him for His knowledge, for His wisdom, for His omnipresence, for His eternity, for His trinity, for His righteousness, for His faithfulness, for His grace, for His mercy, for His lovingkindness. It is the study of the character of God that readies and enables us to worship Him. We not only worship Him for His attributes, but also for His activities. He forgives us sinners, He answers our prayers, He grants us guidance, He loads us with benefits, He protects us, heals us, and He enlightens us. Worship requires awareness of God’s person and awe in His presence. We adore Him because of His excellent acts. In worship we give Him affirmation and praise for all He is and all that He does. We cannot worship someone that we do not know. The glorious attributes of His person, when drawing upon our hearts, prompts and precipitates praise and adoration of His Being. 3. THE PLACE OF WORSHIP Jacob’s ladder introduces us not only to a picture of worship and to the Person of worship, but also to the place of worship. When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the LORD is in this place and I was not aware of it.” He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven” (Genesis 28:16-17 NIV). This experience preceded tabernacle and temple worship. It was long before Hebron, Zion, Jerusalem or any other location had been declared a place of worship. But for Jacob, it was the house of God, the place of worship, for he met God there. This place had great significance in Jacob’s own life and experience. Once when Jacob was in trouble and fleeing from Laban, the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar and where you made a vow to me” (Genesis 31:13 NIV). It is significant that the name Bethel is best translated “house of God.” God called Jacob back to this place again, when He wanted to change his name from Jacob to Israel. It was when Jacob returned to this place of worship, had the people get rid of all the foreign gods, and built an altar again to the Lord, that God appeared to Him again. God appeared to him again and blessed him. God said to Him, “Your name is Jacob, but you will no longer be called Jacob; your name will be Israel.” So he named him Israel. And God said to him, “I am God Almighty; be fruitful and increase in number. A nation and a community of nations will come from you, and kings will come from your body. The land I gave to Abraham and Isaac I also give to you, and I will give this land to your descendants after you.” Then God went up from him at the place where he had talked with him. Jacob set up a stone pillar at the place where God had talked with him, and he poured out a drink offering on it; he also poured oil on it. Jacob named the place where God had talked with him Bethel (Genesis 35:9-14 NIV). It was at the place of worship that God renewed the covenant and promise that He had given to Abraham and Isaac. At the place of worship God talked with him, and confirmed His prophetic Word. In the Old Testament, the places of worship became very significant. God told Moses that He would commune with him between the cherubim. “There, above the cover between the two cherubim that are over the ark of the testimony, I will meet with you and give you all my commands for the Israelites” (Exodus 25:22 NIV). When Solomon dedicated his temple to the Lord, God responded to his prayer, I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a temple for sacrifices.... Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place. I have chosen and consecrated this temple so that my Name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there (II Chronicles 7:12-16 NIV). But when we enter the New Testament era, something changes. For in the New Testament, Jesus Christ is God “tabernacled among us.” He is the “temple of God.” He is “Emmanuel,” God with us. He is the temple of God within our midst. And after His death and victorious resurrection, He builds a new tabernacle, which is His spiritual Body of believers. He is the head, the cornerstone, and we are His building. But the place of worship changes in the New Testament. It is no longer a physical building; it is Jesus Christ in the midst of His people, wherever they are gathered together. Jesus confirms this transition in His teaching on worship in the fourth chapter of John’s gospel. In John 4:19, the woman at the well says to Christ, “‘Sir,’ the woman said, ‘I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is Jerusalem.’ Jesus declared, Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem…we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth (John 4:19-24 NIV). The place of worship on the individual level is the heart that is open to God, worshipping “in spirit and in truth.” This means, simply, in sincerity, honesty, and with the whole heart. Corporately, the temple of God is described for us by Paul the Apostle in his letter to the Ephesians: Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit (Ephesians 2:19-22 NIV). There are two words that are the key to understanding the place of worship: “in Him.” It is IN HIM that we are being built together. It is IN HIM that the temple grows together. It is IN HIM that the building becomes the habitation of God for the Holy Spirit to indwell. Since “IN HIM” is the place of worship, it is possible that one can be “IN HIM” and enjoy individual worship. While individual worship is certainly valid and meaningful, in each of these phrases in Ephesians, the emphasis is on the forming of the people of God. In fact, that formation of one man (or one new people) by the bringing together of Jew and Gentile is central to what Paul is describing. It is possible to enjoy worship as an individual, but God has designed that the place of worship be His people in a corporate sense. We lift up one another when we worship together. Individually our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit, and collectively we together become the dwelling place of God. We enjoy a fuller measure of God’s blessing and presence in our lives when we celebrate God’s life and love together with His people. A pastor once noticed that a member of his congregation had not been attending church regularly, so he dropped by to visit him. The man was sitting in his rocking chair by the fireplace. He told the pastor, “I can worship God just as effectively sitting here alone by the fire.” Taking the tongs, the pastor knelt down, removed a coal off the fire and set it over to one side, asking the man to watch it for five minutes. In a few moments, of course, the life and the fire in that solitary coal died out while those that were on the fire were still glowing. There are times when the fire in my soul may get a little dim and I need to be ignited and warmed and encouraged by the people of God. This is the power of corporate worship. Jesus Christ with His people will be the eternal place of worship. John said, “I did not see a temple in the city because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple” (Revelation 21:22 NIV). What a day that will be, when loosed eternally from our earthboundness, we will ascend into His presence, behold the glory of His person, and be forever in the place He has prepared for those that love Him!
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 21:29:25 +0000
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