Heavenly Worship

"Imagine heavenly worship with all the angels of God praising the Father and His Son, Jesus! Our minds cannot fathom the depths and inspiration of being in the presence of God and praisng Him. Yet some day we shall. What will it be like? Just like church on Sabbath morning? If your response to that is "Oh, no," then your church may have a problems with Inspiring Worship."

That is Russell Burrill, in Creating Healthy Adventist Churches through Natural Church Development.

He goes on...

"Obviously our local church cannot equal the glories of heavenly worship, yet it should have some resemblance to what transpires in the heavenly courts. What makes heavenly worship heavenly?..."

That is an excellent question, and one we are going to consider now. But before we do, just stop for a moment and imagine the heavenly worship service. Why is it so good? What makes you want to be there?

Have you done that yet? Well you need to before we go on....

Have you done that? Good!

There are three parts to the Inspiring Worship Service and remember the definition of Inspiring: "an enthusiastic sense of the direct presence of God and making a meaningful connection with Him".

1. Praise


2. Teaching


3. Work of the people - what people bring into the service

We will be going into each of these areas in future, but the area we will focus on mostly is the third, what you and I bring into the service. There is something here for each of us to do.

Russell Burrill puts it this way...

"...What makes heavenly worship heavenly? God is there, the angels are there and the Holy Spirit has touched the people's hearts. If those are the components of heavenly worship, then certainly all three ingredients should be present on Sabbath morning when God's people meet to worship Him..."

"There is no doubt that God and His angels meet with us each Sabbath. Could the missing ingredient be that we have not given God the opportunity to touch our hearts during the week, and thus we little with which to praise Him on Sabbath? Inspiring worship occurs when God has stirred our hearts all through the week. when that happens, it erupts into exciting worship on Sabbath morning. Church services which appear to be "dull" may be a sign that members of the church have not spent time with God during the week."

Ouch! That hits a tender spot with me. Is my devotional and service life what it should be? Is my contact with God being so crowded out during the week that He can't get through to me on Sabbath morning?

We will go further into this important area in the coming weeks and months but until then we need start walking towards God for six days to arrive on Sabbath morning (see today's picture).