WORDLESS WORSHIP

God has been teaching me about worship. He has been allowing words to empty out of me like water dripping from the needles of a rain-soaked pine. He has filled me with something else-something more precious and heart-rich---worship. I will admit to feeling frightened when He began this process about six months ago (being a verbose person by nature), but have been surprised at the renewal of my passion for Jesus. The whoosh of the burner has fired up a searing heat of renewed love and crazy, crazy obsession for Him and the Word. It is as if my intellect was razed to ground zero and my heart rose up by a breath of highly oxygenated air. I felt lifted again on those wafting currents to heights where only He could teach and restore and give hope!

2 Kings 17:35-36 states, “When the Lord made a covenant with the Israelites, He commanded them: “Do not worship any other gods or bow down to them, serve them or sacrifice to them. But the Lord, who brought you up out of Egypt with a mighty power and outstretched arm, is the one you must worship. To Him you shall bow down and to Him offer sacrifices.”

God is issuing the Israelites a warning, a “be-careful,” a directive. He does not want “other gods before Him.” He has deigned to rescue us too from our personal “Egypt's” for His PERFECT purpose and plan. We may have to travel through a wilderness to reach our Promised Land but we may rest assured that He will always be there to guide us. How then, can we offer up hollow words? He desires true worship-even in the wilderness. That most certainly includes repentance. And, it is the very least that He deserves from us!

Worship is often equated with singing beautiful songs on perfectly sunny Sundays but it is much more than that. Worship engenders something deeper and essential to our Spiritual growth and well-being.

In her book, Closer Than Your Skin , Susan D. Hill wrote about the pleasure of “blue-green” days. She discussed her grandparent's log cabin built in the woods in Ontario. She wrote, “While we vacationed at the cabin almost every summer, our time there wasn't only about vacation, or even about nature, as pristine as it was. For me, the summers on the river were a point of contact with God. My grandmother felt a spiritual longing for the same and wrote a creed in the form of a little poem. She typed it, placed it on a little piece of wood, and framed the edges with birch bark. The creed still sits on the mantle over the stone fireplace in the original cabin.

Here is a place to rest, a time for relaxation.

Here Nature's at her best, releasing you from frustration.

Here's a place for laughter, a place where friend meets friend.

Discord must not enter, nor wills be made to bend.

Here God's love surrounds us. Let's listen to His Will.

Not always in loud voices, but by sometimes being still…”

Susan Hill speaks so eloquently about worship. “I sank down on one knee. Sometimes you just can't stand up during a supernatural moment. It had been a tough week, and I felt out of sorts and weary. With my arms resting on the kitchen counter and my head bowed low, I worshiped this God who knows me so well. My chest heaved with deep sighs as I drank in His presence. Oh God, You Love me. You really do…. It's about a connection and the knowledge that God is bigger than our waking reality. He holds it all in His hand, and He offers it to us that we might see it, touch it, taste it, and experience the joy of His nearness.”

God really just wants US--all of us. He is speaking through the pruning and trimming, singing really, the lyrics of our hearts. Listen! That is worship of our Creator--listening to His voice, waiting through the trial while we cradle that silver-shiny hope close, and pressing ever nearer to His heart.

God DOES issue commands to worship and of course, we must obey. However, there is something more profound that occurs when we CHOOSE to worship. Part of us, the human-ness of us, sloughs away and a little more of Him replaces it. We become more open, malleable, willing, and awe-struck. We experience the tingle of worship from our toenails to the hair on our heads because of His closeness. His breath is already on our faces as we lean in. The heart of us reaches silently upward, cravingly, hungrily upward to meet HIS heart. Listen! He is whispering to us, “Here I am. I am so near. Trust Me!”