BLOG 8/21/13. BACK TO BASICS: WORSHIP AND ADORATION
“Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of the conscience by his holiness, the nourishment of the mind with his truth; the purification of imagination by his hs beauty; the opening of the heart to his love; the surrender of will to his purpose … and all this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable.” (Archbishop William Temple)
“Worship is entering into God’s passion for the world, his creation, his great design to make all thing new, in and through Christ.” (Robert Henderson)
‘And if there were a higher stage than all it would be adoration—when we do not think of favors or mercies to us or ours at all, but at the perfection and glory of the Lord. We feel to his holy name what the true artist feels toward any unspeakable beauty. As Wordsworth says: I gazed and gazed, and did not wish her mine.” (P. T. Forsyth, The Soul of Prayer, p. 43)
“Whether I am chopping cotton in Mississippi, or guest in the Oval Office, I have to remember that I am the glory of God.” (John M. Perkins, civil rights leader, Christian Community Development founder, and evangelist – from a personal conversation)
Worship is what we are made for, or as the classic Westminster Catechism states it: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.”
Yes, back to basics so easily displaced by lesser activities.
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