Worship - Under the Leading of the Spirit.

‘God is a Spirit; and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth’- John 4:24.

Wilson. T [April. 12, 2014]
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It had been our custom, in the time of our being in the denominations and this was for most of us since our infancy- to ‘go to church’ to hear the sermon and at appointed times to ‘take the sacrament’ as it was called. There was one man there appointed to do everything, and we who were there as hearers, had simply and only to follow as he led. Everything had been arranged beforehand. The psalms and hymns had been selected by the minister and practiced by the choir. The portion of Scripture had been chosen to harmonize with sermon.

The prayers ere all in ordered form either read from the prayer-book, or memorized to suit the occasion or season. If the minister for the day happened to be a converted man, he sometimes varied the line of procedure according to his volitions, but there was no exercise of heart or soul among the mute congregation, as to what they should offer to God in worship. They simply followed as they were directed, by the minister.

Now all has to be changed. We assembled to meet the Lord Himself to ‘show forth the Lord’s death’ (1 Cor 11:26), according to His word, and after the example of the early disciples (Acts 20:7), on the first day of the week there was no pulpit, no minister, no prearrangement. In the upper room, the circle of gathered believers had come to meet the Lord, who according to His own promise was to be there ‘in the midst’ (Matt 18:20) in a sense He is not in any other place that meets on unscriptural grounds. For when His people come thus together and call, ‘unto His name’, there is God’s Assembly, and there is God’s ‘Temple’ and the ‘Church’ (1 Cor 3:16), His ‘habitation in the Spirit’ (Eph 2:22). Never before had we realized the present Lord "in the midst" as those of us who assembled there did that morning. We had come to worship by the Spirit of God (Phil 3:16), and not according to the direction of man. And we had a very real sense of help of the Comforter, Who was there to lead out our hearts to God and Christ, in simple yet sacred worship. I had been in great cathedrals where everything to please the senses was called into requisition, where music and all that refined human nature can produce to create a ‘religious feeling’ was in evidence, but where there was a little to lead hearts to God and Christ, and Heaven. But in quite room, in the gathered circle of redeemed and regenerated souls, to whose hearts the Holy Spirit was presenting the Christ of God and bringing the truths of His peerless Person, the virtues of His precious blood, and the values of His sacrificial and atoning death to hearts of His people, causing these hearts to ‘burn’ (Luke 24:32), as He revealed Himself to them; this was indeed ‘fellowship’ as the Scriptures speak of it and this, too, ‘the communion of saints’, words which most had often said with lips- we believe in, but was not enjoyed.

There was much to learn, for we were like to a people who had emigrated to a new land, and scarcely yet knew its climate or its atmosphere, but our spiritual scent discerned it to be a ‘goodly land’- one flowing with milk and honey, as the word of the Lord had described it (Ex. 3:8; Eph 1:3). There was full and free flow of worship toward God and liberty of Spirit in the saints (2 Cor 3:17) was very sweet in its unity and freedom. There was as little in the way of ministry (during the worship), only few suitable and seasonable Scriptures read and linked together, bringing Christ before us, and with this result, that the flow of worship was richer and fuller than it had been before. Several pauses- which seemed somewhat new to those who had never been in Spirit guided assembly of believers before, caused them to wonder if we had lost our bearings or become ‘played out’ as the world would say. But these pauses were greatly enjoyed by the most of those gathered, and one almost feared to break in upon them. This is always the effect of a pause which is of the Spirit’s leading. It brings the soul into close contact with God, into the happy realization of the fellowship of Christ, that it is not reckoned as ‘lost time’ as some who know no better have characterized it, but as the very highest point of the ‘delectable mountains’, as some good man termed the place where the soul gets its fullest view of heavenly city, toward which the pilgrim moves. There are also sometimes pauses of poverty. But the spiritual soul knows the difference, and will not for the sake of keeping up a fair show, ‘break in, not even on the pause that comes through lack of spiritual power and joy, to fill up time, or ‘say sometime’ to break the monotony, but turn to God for his restoring grace and renewing ministry of the Spirit to cause the fire to burn and tongue to utter His praises (Ps 39:3). United worship- the worship of Assembly lead by the Spirit of God is that which is described in 1Cor. 14 and its inner character made known in Heb 10:19-22. It is here as nowhere else that the spiritual ‘pulse’ of an assembly reveals itself. For while there may be a good ‘show’ apart from real spiritual power in preaching or serving, the wheels ill clog and everything drag heavily, where spiritual condition is low in worship. Hence the need of all who assemble to worship God ‘according as it is written to study to appear before God clean in life and right in soul, so as to respond like a well tuned harp, to the Spirit's touch at His call to lead in any exercise in the assembly of the saints.

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