Worship Training

What we are doing in corporate worship is relearning what it means to be creatures made in the image and likeness of God. In the Fall mankind “exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator.” In redemption we have become “a people for God’s own possession so that [we] may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called [us] out of darkness into His marvelous light.” But, as I noted last week, this takes work! It requires a complete reorientation of the direction of our lives, which of course is the work of the Holy Spirit in conversion. Furthermore, it requires an ongoing training of our minds and our hearts, our hands and our feet, to respond appropriately to God. And that is what we are “relearning” in corporate worship. We are relearning what it means to honor God and give Him thanks for His gifts in our lives so that He might receive glory. This process of “relearning” involves a death to our former way of life and a resurrection into a new way of life. That is why Paul describes it as a sacrifice, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service (Rom. 12:1).” We are reminded of the necessity of this sacrifice, of this death, each and every Lord’s Day as we gather here for the Lord’s Service. The call to worship is a call to die to the wrong responses to God and His Word that plagued our lives outside of Christ, and against which we continue to battle in Christ. It is not in our nature to heed this Call and most in our culture do not. But in Christ we are learning to heed this Call. And in learning to heed this call, relearning what it means to be God’s people, “to the praise of His glory.”