Amazement of Worship

If there is one characteristic more than others that contemporary public worship needs to recapture it is this awe before the surpassingly great and gracious God.

Henry Sloane Coffin

We must never rest until everything inside us worships God.

A. W. Tozer

The aforementioned quotations from Henry Sloane Coffin and A.W. Tozer speaks to worship as a full bodied, full hearted, full spirited experience. They speak to the presence of a God who defies human understanding and human language, in whose presence the people of God ought to be postured In reverence of God’s greatness. As the Psalmist aptly said, “Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom.”

Given the unfathomable greatness of God, I have never understood how God’s people can enter the sanctuary for worship with a ho-hum attitude. Even on our worst days, when we enter the sanctuary that ought to be a recognition of the presence of God that moves the attention from ourselves to God. 

Worship for the sake of ritual falls short. Worship that is rote, mechanical, or habitual repetition does not do God justice. Worship ought to evoke wonder. Worship ought to evoke awe. Worship ought to evoke amazement. That wonder, awe, and amazement ought to move us to sway, rock, clap, stomp our feet, lift our hands, weep, moan, and/or shout “Hallelujah!”

I don’t write this to shame anyone, but rather as an invitation to live Into God’s vision for First Baptist to go, “Higher in Worship!”

Pastor Donna Olivia Owusu-Ansah