Amazing things happen in a worship service such as ours. Did you know that a very common office product — it's a frequently-used home product, too — was invented in a worship service? A man named Spencer Silver was working in the research department of the 3M company. The department was trying to create a strong adhesive; instead, they came up with a very weak one. It would stick lightly to things, but then it would give way; it seemed to be useless. Some time later, Art Fry, a colleague of Silver, came up with a practical use for that weak adhesive while he was sitting with the choir at his church during a worship service. His bookmark kept falling out of his hymnal. Why not make it sticky? Over time the Post-It Note became a reality, and life hasn’t been the same since! Of course, that invention was a minor event compared to what else can happen in a worship service!

Every week many of us gather together for what we call “worship.” It's an important part of life. More people gather for worship on weekends in the U.S. than attend all other activities, including sports events.

We're doing a four-part series about how we can grow closer to God, how we can work at what’s often called spiritual formation, and how we can be better disciples of Jesus. Last week we looked at prayer. This week we’ll look at presence: being present with God and with other people in worship. One of my favorite authors, Eugene Peterson, wrote about worship, “It is one of the important acts of discipleship.”

As I did last week, I suggest that you and I imagine ourselves having a conversation over a cup of coffee (or your favorite beverage). If you asked me, “Dave, what are your thoughts about worship?” I'd share some meandering thoughts — the same thoughts I'm going to share with you now. I need to add, however, that these aren’t just my thoughts; they’re based on God's revealed thoughts found in His Word, the Bible.

WHAT WORSHIP IS AND IS NOT
First let’s consider what worship isn't, and then what it is. Worship isn’t entertainment; it's not a performance for the people there. The audience isn’t the many people in the pews or chairs; the audience is One in heaven: God! “All the nations you have made will come and worship before you, O Lord; they will bring glory to your name.” (Psalm 86:9) We worship “before” God; He's the audience.

We shouldn’t ask ourselves, “Did I get something out of worship today? Was it pleasing to me?” We should ask, “Did God get something out of worship? Was it pleasing to Him?” Worship isn’t about us; it’s about God!

The English word “worship” is a derivative of “worthship,” which means attributing worth to someone or something: in our case, God. Worship is telling God how great He is. It's affirming Him in the ultimate way, paying Him the ultimate compliment. In a variety of ways, worship is telling God that He's the greatest!

The Bible says that as followers of Christ we’re Christ’s bride. Worship is to God the kind of ultimate, intimate expression of love and a total giving of one's self that sexual intimacy is between a bride and groom, between a husband and wife.

A CALL TO PUBLIC WORSHIP
We're called to worship. It's a calling from God: the greatest and highest calling. There's nothing better we can do than worship God!

The writer of Psalm 122 declared, “I rejoiced with those who said to me, 'Let us go to the house of the Lord.'” (Psalm 122:1) Psalm 122 is one of a series of 15 psalms in the book of Psalms that are called “psalms of ascent.” Best-selling author Beth Moore wrote a book about the psalms of ascent called Stepping Up, and Eugene Peterson wrote a book about them called A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. Psalms 120 – 134 focus on the pilgrimage of the believer — the journey of the person of God — to the temple to worship. “That is where the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, to praise the name of the Lord according to the statute given to Israel.” (Psalm 122:4) The people were called, or commanded, to go to the temple and worship.

Worshiping God with others shouldn’t be considered an option that we can take or leave; it's part of our calling as followers of the Lord. Throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament we have record of God's people gathering together to worship God. It’s true that worshiping God can be done privately, but it’s also supposed to be something that we do together.

In our culture there's a growing trend to isolate ourselves. In the 1990s trend forecaster Faith Popcorn coined the word “cocooning” to describe this phenomenon. We shop on line instead of going to the mall; we watch movies on DVD instead of going to the movie theater; we “telecommute” more and more with our jobs, doing the work over the Internet from home; we watch sports on TV instead of going to a game. We can also watch our favorite TV preacher on TV instead of going to church.

However, the fact is that you can't fully experience a game unless you’re sitting in the bleachers. We're finding that the social interaction of working together still has benefits over telecommuting. Shopping loses something when you do it on line rather than in person. (Guys, don't shut me out here! Think about a car show or a boat show!) There's something about seeing a movie on a huge screen with lots of other people that can't be beaten. Worship really can't be done well by viewing a TV screen; you have to be there!

The writer of Hebrews in our Bible stated, “Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another — . . .” (Hebrews 10:25) If you spread out the burning embers of a fire, they quickly fade, cool, and die out. If you stoke the embers, pushing them close together, the light and heat that they produce dramatically increase. We get more “fired up” for God when we worship together!

OVERCOMING OBSTACLES TO WORSHIPING
It isn’t easy to worship God as a group. When people get together to worship there can be problems, because we're all imperfect people. For instance, some of the people at a worship service aren’t necessarily our favorite people. They annoy us; they may have hurt us in the past. If they're leading worship it's even more difficult: we may question their motives or keep thinking about the way they acted or something they said in a different setting.

Worship is a time when we can be confronted with our own worst thoughts about other people, so it's a perfect opportunity to practice the love of Christ! Jesus stated, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35) Doing that often requires forgiveness. Jesus said, “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.” (Matthew 5:23-24) As the apostle John put it, “If anyone says, 'I love God,' yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.” (1 John 4:20-21)

We ought to be willing to have anyone in the church sit beside us in worship. If that’s not all right with us, we have some work to do!

Overcoming the distraction of personal taste is also important. This is especially true with music. We all have very unique tastes in music; this means that not every song we sing or every offering of special music will be our favorite, but it's another chance to practice love and tolerance. Are we going to let our personal taste in music derail us from worshiping God? Isn’t God more important to worship than the satisfaction of our taste in music?

There’s no way, given over a hundred people in each of our worship services, that everyone will like every song. People can create their own personal play lists on their iPods, but this is public worship where personal taste takes a back seat to worshiping God together.

There are also times when things don't go right: when the worship leaders make mistakes or they don't do or say things the way we would have thought best. No one knows this struggle better than pastors who go to a different church while they’re on vacation! We’re tempted to judge everything, mumbling to ourselves or to our mates, “That was a lousy transition,” or “That song didn't fit at all,” or “That sermon didn't connect.” Upon leaving a church they had visited while they were on vacation, one minister said to his wife, “There sure aren't very many good preachers, are there?” She looked at him and said, “Nope — and there's one less than you think there is.”

Worship isn’t easy! We have to continually guard ourselves against giving in to the obstacles that keep us from worshiping well.

WHAT TO DO IN WORSHIP
Here are a few simple suggestions on how to get the most out of worship. They're easy to remember, but they aren’t always easy to do.

First, pray at the beginning of the worship service that God will help you to worship well. As Him to help you focus and not be distracted.

Second, pay attention to the words of the songs we sing. It's easy to sing the words without thinking about what we're singing, but singing something that we don't mean doesn't honor God.

Third, pray along with the prayers being prayed. Try to make them your own; let your heart follow along.

Fourth, while the sermon is being delivered, and after it's over, be open to what God has in it for you. What's the “take home” value God has for you in the message? The psalmist in today’s text mentioned of the temple that “There the thrones of judgment stand, . . .” (Psalm 122:5) When we meet God in worship we’re confronted with our holy God, and when we leave we shouldn’t be the same as we were when we came in!

Fifth, remember that we get out of worship what we put into it. Worship isn’t supposed to be passive; it’s something we’re to actively participate in.

THE WOW OF WORSHIP
We need to capture the idea of what worship really is: an encounter with God! How dare we allow ourselves to remain unimpressed? It would be like seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time and mumbling that it’s “just a big old hole in the ground.” Best-selling author Annie Dillard’s observation of the average worship experience is often quoted. She wrote, “Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does not one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares: they should lash us to our pews."

We’ll never be able to worship God perfectly this side of heaven, but we can aim ourselves in that direction! Worship is absolutely necessary if we’re going to become the people God wants us to be, and we should always want to come back for more! Eugene Peterson wrote, “Worship does not satisfy our hunger for God – it whets our appetite. Our need for God is not taken care of by engaging in worship, it deepens.” (A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, p.56)

Let us “Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.” (Psalm 29:2) “Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness; tremble before him, all the earth.” (Psalm 96:9)