Deeper Worship

Excerpt from Ronald F. Bridges "Rediscovering Your First Love" (Here's Life Publishers, Inc.)

A good friend of mine was aggressively pursuing a deeper worship experience with the Lord. His love for God was growing stronger and his desire to draw nearer to Him was sincere. After a couple of months of trying various activities to aid his worship, Rick came to me in frustration, saying that he was unable to feel a genuine sense of worship.

There just seemed to be something lacking, and he couldn't put his finger on it. He was also finding it difficult to concentrate and felt restless during his quiet times...

All of us, at times, carry within us a certain amount of unresolved conflict that can affect us emotionally but not
necessarily hinder our worship. But in Rick's case, he had been totally unwilling to forgive his father even after his
father asked his son's forgiveness. When all of this surfaced, Rick finally realized his sin of unforgiveness toward his father was probably affecting his worship...

After several weeks of prayer and resolution, Rick was able to finally go to his father and tell him that he forgave him, as well as to ask his father's forgiveness for carrying the grudge. As soon as he did this, not only did he renew a strong relationship with his father, but he also began to experience a deeper intimacy in worship with his heavenly Father.

It's not surprising that in a growing love relationship with God, the closer we draw to Him, the more accepting we are when He reveals things we need to deal with...

In terms of our worship, there are at least four different kinds of hindrances that not only hinder worship but could also very easily hinder our progress in a love relationship with God.

Unconfessed Sin
...In order to clear our worship, we must cleanse our lives from sin (1 John 1:9), thus restoring our fellowship with God.

Unforgiveness
...unforgiveness must be humbly confessed to God and honestly resolved before our fellow man, in order to allow our worship to be acceptable to the Lord.

A Self-Centered or Prideful Spirit...
From a worldly perspective, it would be very easy to view the worship of God as a 'what's in it for me' experience...we could also enter into worship with feelings of discontentment or impatience. But such negative feelings would indicate that we are not satisfied with God's design for our lives...

Impurity
...we are not necessarily impure if we experience a sudden reaction to an initial display or suggestion of something impure. The impurity comes in if our second reaction is not to reject the temptation and flee from it...the psalmist provided the solution: 'How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to Thy word' (Psalm 119:9)

The worship of God is an awesome and powerful experience. We must never enter into it with a flippant attitude or an insincere heart. Therefore, our aids to worship must be activities that cause us to focus totally on God...