GREATNESS MEETS NEED

Volumes have been written about worship. Scores of messages have been preached. I am certain that I can add nothing to the wisdom on worship that has already been shared. Yet I venture to speak (I have been preaching on worship on Sunday evenings since the beginning of this year.) and write about worship in hope of inspiring more of it. Why? I am convinced of our great need to worship God more. Jesus said in language that the Father is “seeking” worshippers. That declaration not only reveals the Father’s desire for our worship but also, at least in my thinking, the rarity of worshippers. One does not “seek” what is readily apparent and available. I want the Father to find me a worshipper. I realize that, although we often think of worship as limited to what we do in a "worship service" at church, worship is not an hour service at church but a way of life. Yet, worship as a way of life most often emanates in a moment of verbal and physical expression in the conduciveness of a church service or in a private time of prayer or spiritual contemplation. Thus, it is worship in that context that today I write. Thinking on worship as I was out running errands one day, I suddenly became aware of when and where worship happens in one’s life. Worship happens when my fresh awareness of God’s greatness and goodness converges with my renewed awareness of my need. In that moment I realize how great God is and how much I need Him. I worship because God is great and deserving and inspiring of my worship. I worship because I recognize my need of this great God. To come before God with only an awareness of His greatness, makes His greatness seem theoretic, distant, not-applicable to my life. To approach God with only absorption of my need makes me a self-centered sniveler viewing God as a source from which to get something I want—A Divine Vending Machine. But, together, my acute awareness and fixation on His greatness and my admittance of my great need of Him, results in my sincere worship of Him. In fact, such worship brings such trust, wonder, overwhelming love of God, that one soon has lost sight of his need and only his absorption with the greatness and goodness of God remains. Thus, worship, to put it in the words of two songs, is to come before God with a heart that says, “How Great Thou Art,” and at the same time “I need Thee, Oh, I need Thee, Every hour, I need Thee, Bless me now my Savior, I come to Thee.” Worship happens at the convergence, the intersection, of my awareness of God’s greatness and my admittance of my need. God’s greatness meets my need.

GREATNESS MEETS NEED

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