James W. Goll - The Lost Art of Pure Worship

P ure worshipCan we have it this side of Heaven? Some may say no, but I say yes. What makes our worship pure is not the surroundings; it is the intent of the heart. Always has been, always will be.

I was saved at 19 years of age. I had just spent a year at college, a very wasted year (in more ways than one), and suddenly I was a new creationonly I did not know what that meant. It was 1973 and my hair, when wet, was halfway down my back. Sounds gross now, but that was the way we wore it back then. One day I was in a room of potheads and the next I was walking into a very loud and vibrant church.

I remember it well; my brother brought me to this little church that he and my sister were attending at the time. It was a Friday night college service. We walked into a room of radical worshipers. A full band was leading people in very upbeat songs. Some were relevant, but some of the songs were very hokey-sounding. The funny thing was, even the hokey, old-fashioned songs had a sweetness about them. There was purity in their worship. It wasnt the music; it was their hearts.

My wife says that when she walked for the first time into a room full of people worshiping, she felt she had just walked into a room full of angels singing. Not too long after that time, she and I got to know a lot of those people, and I can say for sure that they were not angels! What they were, though, was a group of hungry and humble people who wanted simply to tell God how great He is. There was purity in their pursuit of Him.

Purity in worship is not the same as attaining perfection in worship. Pure worship is that wonderful moment when a struggling heart is able to get past itself and give honor and praise to the Worthy One, and He receives the incomplete offerings of that weak vessel with open arms. When it is offered in simplicity and sincerity, one small sacrifice of praise becomes something holy and powerful and pure.

How can we create a lifestyle of such praise, becoming a people of praise? It is not difficult, although we try to make it that way.

Shortly after I was saved, I learned that worship is one of the disciplines of the Christian faith. Well, I can tell you that I struggled inside when I heard that comment. Up until then, I had been growing in my awareness of worship as a unique, intimate form of communication between my God and me. Suddenly it was to be considered an act of discipline that, like Bible study, is an essential tool in my spiritual growth. That seemed like an insufficient concept, as if Jesus needs to convince the Father to love me because He, the Son, already has. (Hi, Father. This is My friend, Chris. Would You do Me a favor and be kind to him because he is one of My friends? All right, Son. Ill agree to be loving to him, but only because I love You and for some odd reason You seem to like him.) How can we carry on a personal and intimate relationship if we feel obligated to do it in order to grow? That makes the relationship just a means to an end. Something is missing.

I also failed to understand the term, sacrifice of praise. I put it into the wrong context. To me it meant a gift that hurts. Worship was a duty, initiated by me solely out of obedience to His mandates. Yes, obedience is a good thing, but imagine a father whose children only come to him in response to his summons, feeling obligated to come. For a father, what a joy it is when your children come on their own because they want to be with you. That is the essence of the heart of pure worshipworship that is initiated by the love of the worshiper.

How many people over the years have approached an earthly king, bowed their knee in reverence, and yet carried hatred in their hearts? I am sure many believers have done that with God. They are in such despair in their life circumstances that if you pressed them they would admit their anger toward God, maybe even their hatred, because of what He is either doing or not doing in their lives. Yet they know they need to worship God. So these people file into church on Sunday, take their places, and go through the motions of their weekly worship service, all the while carrying bitterness in their hearts. Alas, it is all too common.

Please dont misunderstand me. I think that showing up to praise God in spite of feeling bad is an amazing form of obedience and that it can be a sincere expression of love. What is sad, though, is that this becomes the pinnacle of some peoples worship experience. Every now and then, when the music is just right and the circumstances of life are just right, worship becomes something different. Unfortunately, it is only every now and then.

What then can empower us to move forward in life with hearts that love Him as He deserves? I found a key in Johns revolutionary statement: We love Him because He first loved us (1 John 4:19 NKJV). Simple, I know. But it is the key to growing as a lover. To the extent we know were loved, we have the capacity to then love in return. It is such a wonderful truth. I can love God. To do that, the only thing I need more of is a deeper knowledge of His love for me. It might sound a little selfish, except that the fruit of His affection for me is more love for Him.

Its like the old grade-school bar graphs. One bar gets titled The Knowledge of Gods Love for Me. The next bar, titled My Ability to Love, can be only as long as the firstnever longer. I am bound and limited in my capacity to love by how deeply I know His love for me.

This truth and the corresponding process of growth is so important for believers to grasp. Otherwise, we slowly learn how to do this thing called Christianity until, after a few years, we have got it down so well that we have no need of God. We call it Church. But in reality, Church is not a building or a structure; it is His loving Bride. We are His Bride. God has first initiated love toward us, and we respond.

Do you know you are loved? If you do, then you have the capacity to return that love back to Him in pure worship. If you are not sure of Gods love for you, then your gift of worship may be mixed with hidden purposes. You may be worshiping to expunge your own guilt. You may be worshiping to try to feel love so you can be sure of it (never realizing that before you ever thought about worshiping Him, He was already loving you perfectly). You may be worshiping because it is a necessary thing, which it is, but if it has become a duty and not a joy, you will have missed the whole concept of relationship-based, pure worship.

God initiated relationship. He made human beings so that He could love us. He walked with Adam in the Garden. Instead of telling Adam to build Him a church or evangelize the monkeys, God just wanted to be with Adam because He loved him. With Adams sin, what died was not just Adams body (eventually), it was Adams relationship with God. The companionable walks came to an end. Habitual duty replaced an eternal relationship of pure love.

We now have the capacity to return to that place of authentic relationship with God, because God has revealed Himself to our hearts so that we can really see His true nature and His desires.

Paul prayed repeatedly that people would have this revelation. For the church at Ephesus, he prayed that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him (Eph. 1:17 NKJV). Just as eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil brought down Adam and Eve, the spirit of the revelation of the knowledge of Jesus restores relationship. When true knowledge is restored to true believers, true worshipers come forth.