A. W. Tozer's Worship reflection (화요일 저녁반) > 제자학교

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A. W. Tozer's book on Worship delved deeper into how and what worship is. As I read through his book, there were many topics that put worship in a different lens, while providing the justification with context from the Word and Jesus.

The book was clear that God created us to praise and worship him. That is why we are here on this earth. But over time, we have perverted this. Tozer broke it into 4 different types of worship: Cain worship, Samaritan worship, Pagan worship, and Nature worship. 

Cain worship is when we do not worship in the way that God has commanded us. Instead, we got about our own ways of worship based on our own judgement and knowledge. However, the risk with this is that it could be something that does not glorify God. This is compared to the offerings that Cain had provided to God. It was not that it was not his firstfruits, but God needed the blood to be spilt to cleanse the sins. Cain rather used his own judgement to do what he thought was best for God. 

Samartian worship is when we only choose parts of the Bible that we want to believe, and selectively use those parts of the Bible and take those scriptures out of context. This can lead us down a dangerous path where we begin to fabricate our own version of the Bible which is not accurate and can steer us away from Christ, where the Word is perverted against God's will.

Pagan worship is not acknowledging God and beginning to worship the creatures of this world as gods, even though it is God that created all those things.

Nature worship is worshipping the beauty of the world. People are so captivated by the beauty that is stirs great emotion in their hearts, and they misinterpret this stirring of emotion as God. Similarly, music is known to be a powerful tool in our praise and worship. But, it is not the music itself, but the words that are being sung and the glorification of God which is the main component. We cannot allow the music to shadow the main purpose of the praise of glorifying God.

These different types of worship that we must steer clear from helped dissect the praise that is in my life, and how I must be careful in this journey with Christ to be aware of where my heart lies during worship.

An additional key point was that man cannot worship out of their own heart. He must reflect back the glory of God. The Holy Spirit must come down to us and reflect back the glory of God. If this does not happen, then there is no worship. 

He brought up how Isiah was also not perfect, but h was aware of his uncleanliness. The danger in today's society is that we are unclean AND unaware. Isaiah saw the violent contrast between the Holy God and ourselves. So much so that he could not even joke about God after experiencing his presence. He was said to have experienced a strangeness in God. God's presence unknown to the sinful and worldly and self-sufficient human. There was no human familiarity in God.

This statement captivated me. How his sheer presence was beyond human understanding. It is something that is so alien to us that we are overwhelmed with fear. 

To end, worship is not only singing, but also walking, doing, living, working, going, and serving. Worship is all aspects of our life. It is not one day each week or only within the confines of church walls, it is everywhere. As a Christian that is born again, we must enter into the fullness of the Holy Spirit - to surrender our hands, feet, voice, brains, presence and everything else to Jesus Christ. We must cleanse our thoughts so that God can dwell within us. He treasures our pure, loving, meek, charitable, and kind thoughts. All other impure thoughts of spite, lust, covetous, proud, and selfish thoughts will push God away; He will not dwell is us. So strengthen our hearts and worship God daily with all our hearts, soul, mind, and strength, and we will experience a peace unlike any other.