Good morning. It is Sunday, our chosen day to worship the Lord with our full attention. It is a goal of worship to provide for the worshiper spiritual refreshment. At the end of a long week and in preparation for the next, we need to be refreshed in the Lord. We need to have our spirits lifted up in greater joy and our minds energized in greater focus. It is a goal of worship to lift up before the throne of the Almighty our songs of praise, our prayers of love, and our words of recognition and adoration of Him in His fullness. It is a goal of worship to energize the weary with a sense of belonging and purpose, and to “light the fires” of faith within the Body of Christ. It is a goal of worship to align the will of the worshiper(s) with the will of God. These, and other goals of worship are genuine and worthy.
But today, I would like to suggest another goal of worship that we don’t often consider. The act of worship, worship that is within the desire of God because it is a matter of worship in Spirit and in Truth, is an act of war.
Those are not words that you commonly will read, but I believe that they are true. I will say it again: true and spiritual worship is an act of war.
It is when we are joined in righteous worship that we feel the power of God swell within us, and therefore the voice of our eternal enemy fades away. It is when we are joined in righteous worship that our hearts and minds are united in power and purpose in ways that we seldom if ever feel while independent of one another. It is when we are joined in righteous worship that the Holy Spirit comes the closest to being unleashed in awesome power. It is when we are joined in righteous worship that Satan knows he has no place in our hearts or our minds. It is when we are joined in righteous worship that the victory which is ours by the promise of God is most palpable, the most recognized, the most accepted. It is when we are joined in righteous worship that we are privileged to wage war against the true enemy of mankind and inflict damage.
Is this the rambling of a preacher, or is it the truth of God? I suppose that you, as you read this “thought for the day” will have to decide which suggestion applies. But, to give a solid nudge toward the side of worship being an act of war and that this is the truth of God, I offer a few scriptures:
The Lord your God is in your midst, the mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. Zephaniah 3:17
A Psalm of David: Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle; he is my steadfast love and my fortress,
my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield and he in whom I take refuge,
who subdues the one against me. Psalm 144:1-2
Later in the same Psalm: I will sing a new song to you, O God; upon a ten-stringed harp I will play to you, who gives victory to kings, who rescues your servant David from the cruel sword. Psalm 144:9-10
But I will sing of your strength; I will sing aloud of your steadfast love in the morning. For you have been to me a fortress and a refuge in the day of my distress. Psalm 59:16
Finally, although the list of scriptures that are sung in worship describing our Father God as our leader and protector in war is long indeed, I offer this from the lips of David as he answers the sneering taunts of Goliath: Then David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear. For the battle belongs to the Lord, and he will give you into our hand.” 1 Samuel 17:45-47
When we worship in Spirit and in Truth, we shout the same kind of confident words and songs into the face of the enemy of God and His people. The battle belongs to the Lord! We are His! We worship Him…take that, you enemy of our Lord, and be gone!
Worship well oh warrior of God!
Vern