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KINGDOM PRIORITY ONE
Kingdom people
choose passionate WORSHIP
as their first and highest priority. As the Westminster
confession states, “The chief end of man is to glorify God and
enjoy Him forever”. We believe that intimate relationship with
our heavenly Father is best developed in this life through the
on-going experience of Holy Spirit-led worship.
John 4: 23
MAKING WORSHIP OF GOD A PRIORITY IS A VITAL COMPONENT IN OUR DISCIPLESHIP NETWORK.
Worship: Intimacy with God by
John Wimber
Many people who visit Vineyard Churches remark on the depth and
richness of our worship. This has not come about by chance: we
have a well-thought-out philosophy that guides why and how we
worship God. To understand how we worship God, it is helpful to
learn about our fellowship's history, which goes back to 1977.
At that time my wife, Carol, was leading a small group of people
in a home meeting that evolved into the Anaheim Vineyard. I'll
let her describe what happened during that time...
"We began worship with nothing but a sense of calling from the
Lord to a deeper relationship with Him. Before we started
meeting in a small home church setting in 1977, the Holy Spirit
had been working in my heart, creating a tremendous hunger for
God. One day as I was praying, the word "worship" appeared in my
mind like a newspaper headline. I had never thought much about
that word before. As an evangelical Christian I had always
assumed the entire Sunday morning gathering was "worship" - and,
in a sense, I was correct. But in a different sense there were
particular elements of the service that were especially devoted
to worship and not to teaching, announcements, musical
presentations, and all the other activities that are part of a
typical Sunday morning gathering. I had to admit that I wasn't
sure which part of the service was supposed to be worship.
After we started to meet in our home gathering, I noticed times
during the meeting - usually when we sang - in which I
experienced God deeply. We sang many songs, but mostly songs
about worship or testimonies from one Christian to another. But
occasionally we sang a song personally and intimately to Jesus,
with lyrics like "Jesus I love you". Those types of songs both
stirred and fed the hunger for God within me. About this time I
began asking our music leader why some songs seemed to spark
something in us and others didn't. As we talked about worship,
we realized that often we would sing about worship yet we never
actually worshipped - except when we accidentally stumbled onto
intimate songs like "I Love You Lord", and "I Lift My Voice".
Thus we began to see a difference between songs about Jesus and
songs to Jesus.
Now, during this time when we were stumbling around corporately
in worship, many of us were also worshipping at home alone.
During these solitary times we were not necessarily singing, but
we were bowing down, kneeling, lifting hands, and praying
spontaneously in the Spirit - sometimes with spoken prayers,
sometimes with non-verbalized prayers, and even prayers without
words at all. We noticed that as our individual worship life
deepened, when we came together there was a greater hunger
toward God. So we learned that what happens when we are alone
with the Lord determines how intimate and deep the worship will
be when we come together.
About that time we realized our worship blessed God, that it
was for God alone and not just a vehicle of preparation for the
pastor's sermon. This was an exciting revelation. After learning
about the central place of worship in our meetings, there were
many instances in which all we did was worship God for an hour
or two. At this time we also discovered that singing was not the
only way to worship God. Because the word "worship" means
literally to bow down, it is important that our bodies are
involved in what our spirits are saying. In Scripture this is
accomplished through bowing heads, lifting
hands, kneeling, and even lying prostrate before God.
A result of our worshipping and blessing God is being blessed
by Him. We don't worship God in order to get blessed, but we are
blessed as we worship Him. He visits His people with
manifestations of the Holy Spirit. Thus worship has a two-fold
aspect: communication with God through the basic means of
singing and praying, and communication from God through teaching
and preaching the Word, prophecy, exhortation, etc. We lift him
up and exalt Him, and as a result are drawn into His presence
where He speaks to us."
MP3 Stream |
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WORSHIP...My Shachah Story
by Senior Pastor Marty Boller
given Feb 2008 [Download
MP3 - 29 min]
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