This is Part 2 in a three-part series on Worship. Erin Deuel, Worship Director, talks about our identity in worship.

 

IDENTITY

 

"Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favor, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it 'real life' and don't let him ask what he means by 'real'."

-C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

 

worship: shachah

to depress; to prostrate 

to bow down, crouch, fall down flat, humbly beseech, do obeisance, do reverence, worship

 

obeisance: a movement of the body made in token of respect or submission , or the acknowledgement of another's superiority of importance

 

If we create the vision, we're responsible for fulfilling the vision.

 

"Whenever they are attending to the Enemy Himself (God) we are defeated, but there are ways of preventing them from doing so. The simplest is to turn their gaze away from Him towards themselves. Keep them, watching their own minds and trying to produce feelings there by the action of their own wills. When they meant to ask Him for charity, let them, instead, start trying to manufacture charitable feelings for themselves and not notice that this is what they are doing. When they meant to pray for courage, let them really be trying to feel brave. When they say they are praying for forgiveness, let them be trying to feel forgiven."

-C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

 

You can't bear fruit apart from Him. You have to abide in Him.

-John 15:4

 

 

PSALM 139

You have searched me, Lord, and You know me.

You know when I sit and when I rise;

You preceive my thoughts from afar.

You discern my going out and my lying down;

You are familiar with all my ways.

Before a word is on my tongue You, Lord, know it completely.

You hem me in behind and before, and You lay your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.

For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are Your thoughts God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand - when I awake, I am still with You.