| “God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” |
| —John 4:24 |
The Season of Advent and Christmastide are still many months in the distance. And yet, as I read the passage of Scripture for today, I cannot help but think of the text of the refrain of a particularly moving Christmas hymn. James Montgomery wrote the words to the poem and Henry T. Smart wrote the hymn tune “Regent Square” to which Montgomery’s poem has been sung in churches since the 1820s. The last verse and refrain read:
All creation, join in praising
God, the Father, Spirit, Son,
Evermore your voices raising
To th’eternal Three in One.
Refrain: Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King.
The fact is, as believers in the life-transforming power of the living Lord Jesus Christ, we are called to come and worship Him. As I’ve mentioned before in this blog, the word “worship” means to “attribute worth” to God. Said another way, when we “worship” God, we tell Him how much we value who He is, or how greatly He has worth to us. We illustrate to Him the qualities that He has revealed to us that stir our hearts and minds and persistently draw us to Him.
Worship plays a very important part in the spiritual formation of a believer. And, contrary to what many may experience in today’s churches, worship is not a “spectator activity.” By its very nature, worship is participatory. We cannot simply observe worship. We cannot merely sit and watch others perform acts of worship, as if we were watching a play, or a concert, or a sporting event. No, to truly worship, we must participate and invest the totality of our human modalities—heart, soul, mind, and strength; or emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and physical—in the act of worship.
When we consider the setting in which we gather with other believers for worship each week, we need to ask ourselves: “Do we wholeheartedly worship? Do we invest all of ourselves in the act of telling God why we love Him and how much we appreciate His qualities that He has revealed to us.” Consider these words of Jesus, on an occasion when He was teaching His disciples about worship, as recorded in John 4:24:
“God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”
As we begin another day, let’s plan now to invest all of ourselves in worship this coming weekend. Let’s not go to church as spectators. Rather, let’s go to church prepared to act in worship as true disciples. Let’s desire the fullness of the worship as a means of growing the depth of our spiritual formation. Yes, let us truly “come and worship, come and worship, worship Christ the new-born King.”
Based on a blog originally posted on Tuesday, September 19, 2017
