Worship (July 8, 1998)

God has been teaching me a great deal lately about worship and the relationship between that and an increased hearing in the prophetic. This is just a summary, but here is the gest of what He has been saying to me:

First, He wants us to be instant in season and out of season to worship Him. "In season" is easy.. that is worshipping when we feel like it. "Out of season" is a bit harder.. .that is worshipping when our world seems to be falling apart, when we are burdoned down with the cares of this world, when we are sad, etc. David understood this and in the Psalms we see a constant pattern of David taking his eyes off of the circumstances (and boy did he have some get-me-down types of circumstances) and focusing his eyes on God. Here is the secret.. as we focus our eyes/attention away from the circumstances to God, God meets us and lifts us up to the heavenlies.. into His presense where there is "fullness of joy". I am going through a situation right now that in the natural is very hard for me... if I focus on this situation, I become overwhelmed and sad, alternating between wanting to give up and crying out to the Lord for His intervension in it. But God showed me that He has a better way.. He wants me to focus on Him instead of on the situation. He wants to saturate me with His presense and reveal Himself to me. As I look to Him instead of to the problem, I am drawn to Him and my heart spills out into worship. The problem becomes small and insignificant in the presense of almightly God who can do all things and who works all things together for good. But God becomes so big and so real and so tangile and so awesome.

Second, initmacy with God and worship go together. As we draw into worship, He comes and inhabits our worship.. for the bible says God inhabits the praises of His people. When He inhabits, we are in His presense and there is an increased intimacy with God. As His presense increases, we cannot help but respond to Him with increased worship and as the worship increases, His manifest presense with us increases... a circle that goes on and on until we are tranformed from our circumstances into His very presence. And as God's manifest presence with us increases, there is an increase of anointing.. where we can flow more freely with God and what He is doing.. where we can move more easily in His gifting. It becomes easier to hear Him speak. It becomes easier to flow in the prophetic. But our goal is NOT to worship so we can flow more and move more in the prophetic. Our goal is to worship to draw closer to Him and it is a "fringe benefit" that we are able to flow more easily in His anointing. Our attention and focus are on Him, not ourself and we desire to do with Him what He is doing to please Him. We are drawn into new depths of closeness with God.

Finally, God told me that worshipping Him is my first and highest calling -- what I was created to do. Yes, it is good to share Jesus with the unsaved. Yes it is good to tangibly meet people's needs and so manifest the love of God. Yes, it is good to minister to the saints. Yes it is good to breather His life through the prophetic, to set captives free and empower believers through renewal prayer. I am to do all of these things, because my Father is doing them and I am to do with Him what He is doing. But my greatest ministry ... my highest priority... is to minister to the Father.. to worship Him. This is what He created me to do. And as I minister to Him and come deeper into His presense, I am able to see/hear/preceive more what His heart is and what He is doing/saying. And then I am able to flow more easily in His anointing (e.g. with His Spirit to do what He is doing). And He does delight to use me like this, to let me do with the Father what the Father is doing. Yet my highst calling and priority remains to minister to the Father in love by worshipping Him freely with my whole heart, my whole being. For when I worship God, it blesses Him.. it ministers to Him, it makes Him happy.

I have been in the "school of worship" for about a week now. It is incredible... I am going through circumstances that should be overwhelming, that should really get me down. Yet my spirit is soaring and I am filled with His joy. (This is because I have chosen to focus my eyes on Him and to look to Him instead of to the circumstances.) He has told me that I have a choice.. I can choose to look to Him and be transformed into His presense or I can choose to focus on the problems/circumstances and be dragged down by them.

God told me that to go up "with Him" in worship, I must let go of the things that hold me down.. to stop clinging to them. He told me that if I am willing, He will help me.. even to the point of prying my grasp off of those things I am holding onto. Then He showed me a picture of a child's hand tightly grasping a stone. A parent's hand came along and began gently prying the fingers back one by one until the child could not cling to the stone any more and it fell out of his hand. God said He would do this for me... to help me release those things so I could go higher with Him. He said there would be times when I would find it easy to simply let go of what holds me back and go up into worship with Him. But when it was hard to let go, He would not be upset.. He promised to help me (pry my fingers loose from what I am clinging to) if I will choose to look to Him and focus on Him instead of on it.

A friend of mine put it this way

"Where we focus our attention is where we will dwell. We have a choice. We can live in the sad-lands, or we can live in God's promised land. It is up to us."

God has been teaching me to focus my attention on Him and worship and that transforms me from the sad-lands into His very presense where there is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore.

Come there with me.... turn your eyes from your circumstances to our awesome and most powerful God and enter into worship... for He IS worthy of our worship and praise... and in His presense is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore.