Personal Worship | Expanding Worship pt.1
Early on in Covid, I began to think about how worship as a Christian practice was experiencing an apex of “flattening”, in which lines were blurred and practices became generic. In the west, this has moved towards a hyper-individualization of Christian Worship. I spent several months developing these ideas out in a series of posts called COVID worship. I want to take the time, over a year later, to begin fleshing them out even more.
To break apart this flattening, I think we find three different (but related) practices of Christian worship in Church tradition. Personal Worship, Household Worship, and Corporate Worship. I want to take the time today to start building out a foundation for Personal Worship is.
Personal Worship is so much more than just having a quiet time. If anything, personal worship is about developing a habitation of the heart for personal moves of God. In scripture, the first time we see worship happen it’s a simple recognition of and a testimony to a God a person is in a relationship with. Worship has to begin at a uniquely personal space of recognition of who God is.
Seth also had a son, and he named him Enosh.
At that time people began to call on the name of the Lord.
Genesis 4:26 NIV
In the west, we have moved towards an experience of personal devotion being mainly about knowledge. We read this book, we flip through a devotional, we tear through a bible reading plan...but always feel inadequate because we don’t know God well enough. The Grand evangelical project of the last 50 years was for people to understand the importance of a personal relationship with God won, but also lost because this was primarily worked out through the enhancement of knowledge at the expense of personal experience. In worse cases, in an attempt to distance from a charismatic influence, any idea of personal experience became highly suspicious and frowned upon. * I don’t make these statements to disregard things, but in an attempt to realize how small corrections over time can leave a vast gulf between a starting point and an end points orientation.
Personal worship is where we develop the deep practice of listening. It’s where we learn to pray. Scripture is a massive part of this time, but often the only thing we focus on is knowledge or learning, not delighting in the presence of God. It is in personal worship we follow the admonition found in James 4 of drawing near to God for the purpose of Him drawing near to us. We aren’t doing this out of coercion or manipulation, but knowing that if our personal altar isn’t primed for a move of God, we are going to be awkwardly stumbling in our attempt to any interaction with His presence. We engage in personal worship out of deliberateness and hunger for the move of God in our lives before we see the move of God around us in public.
E.M.Bounds, in his chapter on Prayer and Definiteness sums up this idea.**
It is essential that in going on in religious experience, we have something definite in view, and strike out for that one point.
To me, the best example of this can be found in the book of James. Strong words about counter action.
Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. James 4:7-8 ESV
I think about all of those intentional actions and how we can only place them in our lives and heart by submitting to the rhythm of personal worship in our life.
Resources
*To really begin to understand this, I’d point toward the language John MacArthur, a preeminent evangelical scholar at the popular level wrote in his book “Charismatic Chaos”. https://amzn.to/3qYBwZx
**The modern translation of Bounds “Complete works of Prayer” is a fantastic read to inspire personal worship. https://amzn.to/3oUxhMO
Jon Tyson, pastor of Church of the City NYC, preached a sermon about the role and power of scripture in our life. It is highly practical and one of the best apologetics for daily scripture reading that I have ever read or heard. You can watch the video here.
Do you want to get occasional emails from me about spiritual formation and development? I send them out a couple times a month and I’d love to pop them to you in your inbox.