Like the geese hopping through dead grass
looking for treasure, my thoughts skip about,
grabbing a seed thought here and there,
pausing occasionally to ponder or wander.
I am Abba’s daughter, loved, chosen.
I need to sit still and rest, listening.
I feel his Presence, know He is here.
May I wait in silent expectation
for what he wants me to hear!
“Worship!” That theme keeps creeping in.
You fill the universe, you fill my heart.
It’s a start, this time apart—time to let go
of the nagging ebb and flow of worries,
banish them like the frozen shafts of water
thet melt away as river waves propel them
out of sight, out of mind. I am present
in this sacred moment. It’s where I need to be,
not breathing future tense and tension.
Yes, the past has passed. What’s new will too.
Silent now, head laid against your chest,
your love gently saturates the air,
doing what’s essential to prepare
my lungs for what is coming next:
polluted air, everywhere.
Your love is coating, protection,
a strong shield against those darts
that always seem to strike my heart.
Halt! I don’t want to think about that!
Right now I only need to breathe
the glory of your Presence!
Can you relate? Bowing my heart (not just my head) in the Presence of God is what I long to do with sincere focus. Yet I often find that distractions interrupt my attempt to worship. Some of them are anxieties about what is around the corner, other times they are grief about what just happened or was said in a conversation. This poem was written in a protected time and space: a winter drive out to a river in Belle Isle, Michigan, and although I longed to just worship, concentration required admission of my inadequate attention to the Person I was meeting.
Worship is not performing rituals without heart involvement. It is not merely speaking certain words, going to church (called a “place of worship”) just to sing and listen. True worship consists of complete devotion to God:
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God– this is your true and proper worship. (Rom. 12:1 NIV)
We are human beings with bodies, minds, souls and spirits. When we give our bodies to God he comes to live in us, and we become united with him, living in him (John 15). It is a love relationship, one that involves every part of us and incites us to live all for him.
Paul’s urge to dedicate our bodies to God comes right after the moment when Paul was contemplating the richness of God’s mercy in reaching beyond his chosen people, the Jews, to also include people of other nations who turn to him:
33 Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! 34 “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” 35 “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them?” 36 For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen. (Rom. 11:33-36 NIV)
That is an example of true worship: praise, adoration of his character and infinite being, humility when thinking about his amazing grace in creating the world and inviting us to be his people when there is no way that we deserve it.
So how can we cultivate worship like that? It is so much more than reciting words or performing rote movements. Jesus quoted this message that was given to Isaiah about that kind of fake worship,when he explained to his disciples that the Pharisees were not truly worshiping God (cf Mat 15:8):
13 The Lord says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught. (Isa. 29:13 NIV)
What Jesus told the woman at the well is that God desires true, pure worship that comes from real spiritual connection with him.
23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (Jn. 4:23,24 ESV)
Oh wow ! God is looking for people who will worship him like that! It is his desire to be linked spiritually with us, bringing us into such intimate relationship with him that worship is a natural outcome. A.W. Tozer explains it so well:
“God desires to take us deeper into Himself. We will have much to learn in the school of the Spirit. He wants to lead us on in our love for Him who first loved us. He wants to cultivate within us the adoration and admiration of which He is worthy. He wants to reveal to each of us the blessed element of spiritual fascination in true worship. He wants to teach us the wonder of being filled with moral excitement in our worship, entranced with the knowledge of who God is. He wants us to be astonished at the inconceivable elevation and magnitude and splendor of Almighty God! There can be no human substitute for this kind of worship and for this kind of Spirit-given response to the God who is our Creator and Redeemer and Lord.[1]”
The worship we desire to learn to practice comes from increasing awareness of who God is, what he has done and what he is doing now. It sweeps out of our minds the distractions of worry as we realize how great he is, how good he is, how loving he is. His patience with us is great mercy as he walks with us on this journey of learning to worship the invisible God who is in us and everywhere. Our spirits need to know truth, both from Scripture and the training of being his disciple, and we must gear our minds to contemplate that truth as we tune our entire spirits to his Spirit, who is right here in us and with us. More from Tozer:
“There is the point of reality where we begin our fellowship and friendship and communion with God. But where we stop no man has yet discovered, for there is in the mysterious depths for the triune God neither limit nor end. When we come into this sweet relationship, we are beginning to learn astonished reverence, breathless adoration, awesome fascination, lofty admiration of the attributes of God and something of the breathless silence that we know when God is near.[2]”
We need to find protected space and time to practice this kind of worship. Yes, we need to breathe his air in “breathless silence” as we turn our whole being to commune with him. May it be so!
[1] Tozer, A W. Worship: The Reason We Were Created-Collected Insights from A. W. Tozer (p. 46). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.
[2] Ibid., p. 49.
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