THE TRINITY & TRUE WORSHIP
Here is a document I produced for the church I work for and hope it is of some help for someone!
True worship
We at St George’s believe that we are called to be ‘true worshippers’
We are chosen people, created to ‘worship God and enjoy Him forever’ (Westminster
Catechism). This is the pattern of the Kingdom we see modelled in Genesis; God’s people,
under God’s rule, enjoying God’s blessing.
What does true worship look like?
The bible teaches that true worship is an ‘All consuming, Spirit fuelled, Truth filled,
response to the revelation of God’.
True worship is all consuming
Sadly many people’s understanding of ‘worship’ is when we have a time of singing.
Biblically this is not the case.
Singing is an extremely important element of worship:
-We are called to be a ‘singing’ people (there are over 500 references of singing the bible
and 50 of them are a direct command to ‘sing to the Lord’)
-The Father sings over us (Zep 3:17). Jesus sang with His disciples (Matt 26:30). The
Spirit inspires song (Eph 5-18:19).
-Singing is also something that is used to glorify God throughout the whole Bible and
ultimately Christ centred singing is a pattern modeled by heaven itself (Rev 4/5).
-We are called to encourage each other through song, and singing helps the word of God
dwell richly within us (Col 3:16).
But….singing is not the essence of worship:
The Bible says;
-‘Whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God’ (1 Cor 10:31)
-In Romans 12 we are urged ‘in view of God’s mercy to offer our bodies (our all) as a
living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God’.
-We are called to ‘act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God’ (Mic 6:8).
-Even more explicit are Jesus’ words to ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind,
soul and strength’ (Mark 12:30).
True worship is more than our offering of songs, affections, intellect, service, tithing,
ministry to the poor and broken, it’s a holistic daily offering of life itself.
True worship is a response to revelation
Throughout the Bible and supremely in Jesus we see that ‘we love because God first
loved us’ (1 Jn 14:9) He and He alone is the initiator. We were chosen before the
foundations of the world were even laid! (Eph 1:4). God spoke us into being and called us
His own, all we can do is simply respond to His awesome revelation.
Jesus is the enabler of our response; through His perfect worship on the cross we can
now boldly draw near the Father at all times, in all places. ‘Therefore brothers and sisters,
since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus [...] let us
draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith’ (Heb 10:19/22).
True worship is Spirit fuelled and therefore Truth filled
Jesus tells us that God is Spirit and we must worship Him in spirit and Truth, this is the
kind of worshipper the Father is seeking (Jn 4:23). Jesus has opened up the way to the
Father and the Spirit, who we now worship by, leads us in (Phil 3:3, Eph 2:18). It is the Spirit of God that empowers our
worship, He reveals Jesus to glorify the Father, He refreshes, challenges, comforts,
convicts, convinces us and He leads us into all truth (Jn 16:13). We can not truly
worship God without the Spirit of God in our lives therefore we need to continue being
filled with the Spirit (Eph 5:18). This also highlights the importance of being reliant on the
leading of the Spirit in our times of sung worship together, only the Spirit can truly lead us
to the Father.
As the Spirit brings home to us the love of the Father through the sacrifice of the Son we
can respond in beautiful and Biblical worship.
I long to see St George’s transformed into a church of true worshippers, a people who
honour God with their lips and with their lives (Heb 13:15-16).
Chris Sayburn 2009 (please use with permission)
