Category Archives: Faith and Practice

Portable Worship

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I offer to you today another gem from A.W. Tozer which speaks to what, I fear, is a common view of worship today.  “Worship is something we do when we go to Church… worship will start in 15 minutes…” If this is our notion of worship, it is a falsehood, and we are still missing what it means to draw into the presence of the Holy God in worship.

Why is it that when we think of worship, we think of something we do when we go to church? God’s poor stumbling, bumbling people; how confused can we get, and stay confused for a lifetime and die confused. Books are written confusing us further, and we write songs to confirm the books and confuse ourselves and others even further; and we do it all as if the only place one can worship God is in a church building we call the house of God. We enter the house dedicated to God, made out of bricks, linoleum and other stuff, and we say, “The Lord is in His holy temple; let all kneel before Him.”

I personally enjoy starting a service that way occasionally. But it does not stop there. Come 9:00 A.M. Monday morning, if you do not walk into your office and say, “The Lord is in my office and all the world is silent before Him,” then you were not worshiping the Lord on Sunday. If you cannot worship Him on Monday, then you did not worship Him on Sunday. If you do not worship Him on Saturday, your worship Sunday is not authentic. Some people put God in a box we call the church building. God is not present in the church any more than He is present in your home. God is not here any more than He is in your factory or office.

…If God is not in your factory, if God is not in your store, if God is not in your office, then God is not in your church when you go there. When we worship our God, the breath of songs on Earth starts the organs playing the heavens above.

The total life, the whole man and woman, must worship God. Faith, love, obedience, loyalty, conduct and life – all of these are to worship God. If there is anything in you that does not worship God, then there is not anything in you that does worship God very well. If you departmentalize your life and let certain parts worship God, but other parts do not worship God, then you are not worshiping God as you should. It is a great delusion we fall into, the idea that in church or in the presence of death or in the midst of sublimity is the only setting for worship…

Worship pleasing to God saturates our whole being. There is no worship pleasing to God until there is nothing in me displeasing to God. I cannot departmentalize my life, worship God on Sunday and not worship Him on Monday. I cannot worship Him in my songs and displease Him in my business engagements.  I cannot worship God in silence in the church on Sunday, to the sound of hymns, then go out the next day and be displeasing to Him in my activities. No worship is wholly pleasing to God until there is nothing in us that is displeasing to God.

Without Jesus Christ, there is no goodness, and so I do not apologize at all when I say that your worship has to be all-inclusive and take you all in. If you are not worshiping God in all your life, then you are not worshiping Him acceptably in any area of your life.

Tozer, A. W. The Purpose of Man: Designed to Worship. (Bethany House Pub., Bloomington, MN, 2009) Pgs 125-128.

We Are Hollow Men

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“Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands.
They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see.
They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell.
They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; 

and they do not make a sound in their throat.
Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them.”
(Psalm 115:4-8)

We are hollow people.

We have filled ourselves with food so that there is an obesity epidemic; but still we hunger for purpose and meaning in life.

We pride ourselves in the knowledge of the trivial and technological, but we have lost the basic understanding of how to relate to one another.

We supply our homes with comfort and entertainment, but the saccharine fluff leaves us desolate and rotting inside.

We are bombarded with breaking news every minute, but the truth of what is really happening eludes us.

We are surrounded on social media with “friends,” but we are isolated and feel like know one really knows us.

We chase after the desires of the flesh with no thought of lasting consequence and wonder why we are left feeling empty, broken, and lost.

This generation has more than any age that has gone before, why then are we plagued with emptiness? We read almost everyday of another life lost to suicide, bound by addiction, or even worse; of those who take up arms to inflict violence upon the unsuspecting.

And this is nothing new. T.S. Eliot penned the following in 1925:

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

Could it be that after generations of planting the seeds of idolatry, its hollow fruit is finally coming to harvest? While giving lip-service to the God of Scriptures, have we not chased after the idols of gold and silver, those things of earth and man which offer no hope of life or salvation?

We pursue a career, advancement and success; but feel betrayed when the cold wheel of industry eventually rolls us over.

We have made the individual the arbiter of truth so that everything is subjective, denying the authority (and even existence) of our Creator; and we wonder why the world is full of lies.

We cast of the restraints of antiquated morality for the sake of individual fulfillment; only to find ourselves alone and abused by those we’d hope would bring us pleasure.

All of this is evidence of the truth of Psalm 115. We have laid ourselves low before the false-gods of this world, and we are amazed that we have become like them! We are “shape without form, shade without color; paralyzed force, gesture without motion…” When we see a world filled with violence, deception, and indulgence, isn’t it because that’s what we’ve been worshiping all this time: power, self, and pleasure.

We are hollow, empty people, longing to be filled with that which brings us life; and that is why we need to hear the Gospel of Salvation in Jesus Christ. Quit starving yourselves on the empty and vain things of this world. “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread… Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourself in rich food” (Isa 55:2). Jesus is the Bread of Life (John 6:48), and He gives the water of eternal life (John 7:38). In John 10:10, Jesus said that He came that we may have life and have it abundantly. He alone is way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through Him (John 14:6).

Jesus Christ came to bear the wrath of God to take away our sins, and to give all who believe in Him the gift of forgiveness and pease with God in eternal life. Through His life, death, and resurrection, He has purchased salvation, the reconciliation of those who had “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man” (Rom 1:23). His is the only name given, in heaven and on earth, by which we must be saved… (Acts 4:12).

O hollow ones, if you are longing to be filled with life, with peace, with meaning – won’t you come to Christ Jesus the Lord and Savior. Beloved, if your heart breaks for the lost, if you hear the cry of the madding crowd – won’t you share Christ Jesus your Lord and Savior!

SDG