1. Is not about a prop but about a Person,

2. Is set in Living History,

3. Requires a Living Faith,

4. Is based on the Living Word, and

5. Leads to a Living Lord.

Where does worship fit in our lives?

Evelyn Underhill, a brilliant professor and writer on worship at Oxford earlier in the twentieth century, wrote in her book Worship:

There is a sense in which we may think of the whole life of the universe, seen and unseen, conscious and unconscious, as an act of worship, glorifying its Origin, Sustainer and End.2

I think she is right. The Bible says that the very heavens declare the glory of God. Isaiah wrote of that day when the earth and its inhabitants will break out in worship in a Paradise Regained:

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For you shall go out with joy,

And be led out with peace;

The mountains and the hills

Shall break forth into singing before you,

And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. (Isaiah 55:12)

The Shorter Catechism states, "The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever."

Clearly, the worship of God is a priority for each of us. But we will never prioritize worship, or for that matter truly come to love worship, until our hearts are changed, until we come to experience His love and see that worship is the response of love.

This is what happened to a young woman who was sent away from her mother at a very young age. The little girl's mother had been burned severely and had to give up the child as an infant. The little girl was placed in the home of the mother's sister who lived in another part of the country. The mother had to go through operation after operation and was finally placed in a home. The girl grew up and one day found where her mother was. She went to her. Her aunt who had reared her had shown her pictures of her mother as a beautiful young woman. The girl so looked forward to seeing her mother. She was so nervous the day she entered the convalescent home and was led to the room. The nurse tried to warn her, but the girl was so excited, she couldn't get through to her. She walked in, and the woman in the room was in a wheelchair with her back to her. Then, she turned around. The girl screamed. She had never seen such a face. Distorted and scarred, barely recognizable as a human face, much less the portrait she had seen, the young woman ran from the room in tears. A nurse followed her and found her in a lounge weeping. The nurse told her the story of how when the young woman was an infant, there was a fire and the girl had been trapped in her room sleeping. But the mother risked her own life, going through the flames and the smoke to rescue the baby. She got the baby to safety, but was herself trapped by a fallen, burning piece of the roof. The burns were so terrible that even after so many surgeries, there was little more to do. The nurse told the girl, "Those wounds are wounds of love for you." The young woman recognized her hard heart, repented of it, and ran to embrace this woman who had saved her.

This story is a picture of Christ's love for you. You may have a picture of worship in your mind. That picture may be of stained glass windows and Prayer Book language flowing forth with rich choral anthems. Or the picture you are holding may be of a projector screen with cool, contemporary strains pulsating from a praise and worship band. "Do we worship on this mountain or in Jerusalem?" Both of those are expressions of worship, not the principle of worship. And the pictures of worship we often carry around with us cannot tell the story of worship. The true image of worship is a Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief, bearing your sins on a Roman cross, on a forsaken hill where criminals go to die.

Until you come to see Jesus Christ as Your Savior, who died for you and who rose again from the dead, and until you believe that the One who loved you to death and back again is here today, you will not worship in spirit and in truth. Until you come to worship and say with Evelyn Underhill, "I come to seek God because I need Him. I come to adore His splendor and fling myself and all that I have at His feet,"3 you have not truly come to worship.

But, when hardened hearts are broken by His wounds of love, they are free to worship in spirit and in truth.

Michael A. Milton is the senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga, TN.

1 G. Campbell Morgan, The Gospel According to John (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell, n.d.), 76.