Worship

Lord Jesus, make Thyself to me a living bright reality. More present to faith’s vision keen than any outward objects seem. More dear, more intimately nigh, than e’en the sweetest earthly tie.

I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.

The humblest sweeping maid sweeping to the Glory of God is therefore just as significant as the greatest preacher in the world.

There is a joy which is not given to the ungodly, but to those who love Thee for Thine own sake, whose joy Thou Thyself art.  And this is the happy life, to rejoice to Thee, of Thee, for Thee; this it is, and there is no other.

Why do we not observe how the benevolence of Christians to strangers...has done the most to advance their cause? For it is disgraceful that...the impious Galileans [Christians] support not only their poor but ours as well, while everyone is able to see that our own people lack aid from us!

When human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory, or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch. We are summoned to pass through Nature, beyond her, into that splendor which she fitfully reflects.

Do not try to imagine God, or you will have an imaginary God.

But the most obvious fact about praise – whether of God or anything – strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honour. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless . . . shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it. The world rings with praise – lovers praising their mistresses [Romeo praising Juliet and vice versa], readers their favourite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game – praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. . . . Except where intolerably adverse circumstances interfere, praise almost seems to be inner health made audible. . . . I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: 'Isn't she lovely? Wasn't it glorious? Don't you think that magnificent?' The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about. My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can't help doing, about everything else we value.

To image the being of God toward the world, to be the priest of creation, is to behave toward the world in all its aspects of work and of play, in such a way that it may come to be what it was created to be, that which praises its Maker by becoming perfect in its own way.

Our deepest concern should be for first things and our next deepest for second things, and so on down to zero, to a total absence of concern for the things that are not really good. not means to good at all.

The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become - because he made us. He invented all the different people that you and I were intended to be. It is when I turn to Christ, when I give up myself to His personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own. A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell. Put first things first and we get second things thrown in. C.S. Lewis (a letter)

Who has told every lightning bolt Where it should go; Or seen heavenly storehouses Laden with snow? Who imagined the sun And gives source to its light; Yet conceals it to bring us The coolness of night? None can fathom. Indescribable, uncontainable. You placed the stars in the sky And you know them by name. You are amazing, God!

But Herod believed. At least, enough to worry. He was one prone to err on the side of caution, and so it was enough for him that the Magi had come so far, laden with such gifts. And if there was such a king, maybe the Magi could lead him there. Maybe if he feigned a desire to bring a tribute of his own, the Magi would trust him and lead him to this new king. “When you find him,” Herod told the visitors, “come back and tell me where he is. I have a little something of my own I want to give him.” (Mt 2: 8) After hearing him out, the Magi left for Bethlehem. It wasn’t long before their familiar star rose again, leading them as a shepherd leads its sheep to a house on the outskirts of town. When they found the king, it was no wonder he was nothing more than a murmur in Jerusalem. They entered the place where he lay and beheld a child in the arms of a young woman, practically still a girl. There was no crown or majesty that would attract them to him, no miracle they could see, no signs of greatness. Just a woman and her child. But there was something about that moment that only the woman, her husband, the Magi, and the child knew—something that bent the knees of those scholars to the posture of worship when they saw him… …For most of the residents of Bethlehem, Jesus’ birth went unnoticed, but heaven and earth converged in this little pocket of the Promised Land for the most important birth in history. The angels orchestrated the unlikely meeting of the poor, the displaced, and the curious to announce the coming of the Savior of the world. To some they appeared in dreams. To others they spoke from the sky. To others still, perhaps they shone like a star, leading the Magi to the place where the child was born. Through it all, the angels of the heavenly host had their eyes fixed on this village south of Jerusalem. Since the fall of man, God’s promise to redeem and restore has permeated the air and found its way into the lyrics of kings and criminals. It has been the anthem of the helpless, blind, lame, and guilt-ridden—a song of hope in the night, rolling in from some distant country with the trace of a melody known by heart. In the pasture-lands outside Bethlehem, this song rose like a celestial orchestra, crashing, singing, resounding with the music, holding nothing back. Then all at once, as with the fall of a curtain, the night fell silent, and the audience went back to their homes. Bethlehem went back to being the ordinary town it had been for as long as anyone could remember. But the world would never be the same.

Christianity answered that historical challenge by reorientation of the world view...(African) people sensed in their hearts that Jesus did not mock their respect for the sacred nor their clamor for an invincible savior, and so they beat their sacred drums for him until the stars skipped and danced in the skies. After that dance, the stars weren't little any more. Christianity helped Africans become renewed Africans, not remade Europeans.

Dear Gunnar, No you don’t have to like the hymns. And yes, you do need to sing them—hopefully in approximate tune and rhythm with the rest. It’s an excellent exercise in humility. The peace of the Lord, Eugene Dear Gunnar, So your friends are trying to turn you into a religious consumer, are they, inviting you to their wonderful churches where so much exciting stuff is going on? I would resist it. You’re better off sticking with what you started out with at your Christian re-entry—the “smallest and nearest church.” It’s still my standard counsel in churchgoing. Of course, I’d admit exception, but not for the reasons your friends are setting out. Those several dozen phlegmatic Norwegians, dozing under the liturgical inexpertness of your young pastor, are as good company as any with whom to listen to God’s word and worship his holy name. Where did all this frenzy in “looking for good church" get started anyway? Certainly not from any passion for holy obedience among the “least of these my brethren.” This church-shopping mentality, where we expect to find a flavor to suit every taste, is spiritually destructive. I don’t see any good coming out of church worship that caters to our taste in worship. The peace of the Lord, Eugene

On silence [The demon Screwtape writes:] Music and silence—how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since our Father entered Hell—though longer ago than humans, reckoning in light years, could express—no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise— Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile—Noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples, and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end. We have already made great strides in this direction as regards the Earth. The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end. But I admit we are not yet loud enough, or anything like it.

In his presence, Washington crew men always stood, for he symbolized that for which God’s children always stand.

for him the craft of building a boat was like religion. It wasn’t enough to master the technical details of it. You had to give yourself up to it spiritually; you had to surrender yourself absolutely to it. When you were done and walked away from the boat, you had to feel that you had left a piece of yourself behind in it forever, a bit of your heart.

So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship.

See, from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down. Did e'er such love and sorrow meet, or thorns compose so rich a crown. Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were an offering far too small; love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.

A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.

A child must learn God’s Word and speak of it tenderly, respect God’s reputation and try to enhance it. She must place her very life in the hands of God and trust what those hands might do to it. She must shun emotional and religious junk food that might spoil her appetite for God and her hunger and thirst for righteousness.

being in the presence of a God who is perfectly holy. In this setting, holiness implies not just otherness or transcendence but also wholeness, oneness, purity.

(In this respect, pollution brings together what God wants kept asunder.) “Fooling around,” for example, pollutes both worship and marriage. Indeed, the biblical paradigm cases of pollution are idolatry and adultery, emblems of each other. In each case, some new commitment insinuates itself into an existing relationship and compromises

In idolatry a third party gets in between God and human persons, adulterating an exclusive loyalty. 58 Idolatry violates both negative and positive law, both the first commandment’s prohibition of idolatry (“ You shall have no other gods before me” [Deut. 5: 7]) and also the summary love command of the Deuteronomic code (“ Love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” [6: 5]).

Accordingly, in Scripture and much of the Christian tradition, a “pure” heart is an undivided one.

Scriptural writers fear “double-mindedness” not merely because it shows disloyalty and ingratitude but also because its perpetrator becomes its victim. Divided worship destroys worshipers. Divided love destroys lovers.

Theology becomes therapy. . . . The biblical interest in righteousness is replaced by a search for happiness, holiness by wholeness, truth by feeling, ethics by feeling good about one’s self. The world shrinks to the range of personal circumstances; the community of faith shrinks to a circle of personal friends. The past recedes. The Church recedes. The world recedes. All that remains is the self. 125

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. For this reason the gravest question before the church is always God himself, and the most portentous fact about anyone is not what he at any given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God. Were we to extract from anyone a complete answer to the question: 'What comes into your mind when you think about God?' we might predict with certainty the spiritual future of that man.

But while the subject humbles the mind, it also expands it. He who often thinks of God will have a larger mind than the man who simply plods around this narrow globe.

Not to us, LORD, not to us but to your name be the glory…

I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one God.

Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!

The purpose of the Scriptures is not simply to stimulate us academically, or to provide a living for professional biblical scholars. It is to lead us to God.

The shepherds were welcome at the manger. The unclean were judged to be clean. The outcasts became honored guests. The song of angels was sung to the simplest of all.

But Jesus was not the first Christian; he was and is the Christ. He is not the subject, but the object, of religion.

Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee.