Following Judah's Lion

Reckless Worship

Reckless worship. When a sinner realizes, even in an understandable morsel, who he was and who he is now in Christ, what hindrances could there be to his open worship to the Redeemer? Just a shallow understanding of God’s grace and love toward us should bring forth unbridled expressions of worship that completely overwhelm any feelings of discomfort in a public forum. Why should we care if those who know not our Savior think us peculiar and overly demonstrative in our worship? And why do we hold back our worship during the day while we give the honor to the things of this world? What an honor to be allowed to praise Jesus, our Master.

There should be times where His presence so overwhelms us that we just bow in holy silence without sometimes even meditating on anything specific, His presence is enough. There are times when we cannot control our emotions and we must weep openly because of our gratefulness to the Savior for our own redeemed condition purchased upon His own sacrifice. There are times when we should dance, so taken by joy that we cannot remain still. A dance that doesn’t resemble the version the world uses like mating calls, but a sanctified whirling and jumping that demonstratively reveals what we are experiencing inside our hearts at that moment. There should even be times when we are brought to our knees, even in the midst of a gathering in which no one else feels led to manifest the same position. In those times our hearts are broken before God and with Holiness being revealed to us, like Isaiah, we are undone with our own uncleanness and simply in a sacred awe before the Risen Christ.

Pride and self consciousness must have no part in such a reckless worship, neither others or worries or anything of this present world. In our present form these times of extraordinary pre-heaven experiences should be precious to us, and we should handle them as a present day alabaster box that has given us the unimaginable privilege of breaking and pouring its worshipful fragrance before the only One Who will ever be worthy of its virtue. To be invited to worship the One who openly gave Himself for you, in that light what could you ever hold back? Do you worship Him alone, moving past any fleshly self consciousness, and verbally worshiping Him “face to face” as it were. I recall Charles Finney remarked when he fled to the forest to seek God on the night of his extraordinary conversion, he would begin to pray and stand quickly to his feet as he heard some rustling of the leaves because he thought someone might be coming and see him on his knees praying. Upon realizing no one was there, he was overwhelmed with shame because he would be self conscious about praying before God.

And so should it be with us. Why would we look around to see others when we have come to worship Him and He has come to receive it? The bulletin, a kid running, a woman’s dress, or anything else should not attract our attention and surely not our hearts, His presence is our life and our complete focus. Forget about your problems and cares and cast them joyfully upon His eternal shoulders for in that you will find His yoke easy and light and the rest that only He can give will enter your heart by His gracious Spirit. With our busy and Martha-like lifestyles we at these times that are set apart and sanctified for worship should be altogether different. It is so sad that the waiting upon the Lord that is sometimes necessary to come into His presence is seldom exercised because we are on some sort of time restriction, but when the football game goes into overtime we feel it is a blessing.

Let us return to reckless worship of the Lion of Judah, sacrificing schedules and worries and thoughts of temporal issues, the King has beckoned us to come into His glory. We have lost the knowledge of being lost in God’s presence and in so doing losing ourselves. How often have we exclaimed, “Oh my, look at the time” when we have lost track of time in work or play, but when have we lost track of time in God’s wonderful presence? There is such a thing as a Word based experience, but so many are afraid of showing emotion due to the fear of excess, which is exactly the accusation Christ’s own disciples leveled at the woman who anointed the Lord with the spikenard ointment, it was an excess.

Excess? On Jesus? Away with such a carnal and selfish thought, He is beyond any excess. If all the mountains were gathered, and all the seas, and all the planets, and all the stars, if the entire universe was gathered together, burned into one exquisite and priceless ointment of unspeakable value and poured out before the throne of the Lamb of God it would fall infinitely short of ever being considered an “excess”, He alone is excess. And our worship should be reckless and without parameters poured out before the One who is excess and has by His grace shared with us an excess that may always be beyond us. Life everlasting with the Lord of Glory - excess unimaginable!

Should that knowledge elicit a timid and self conscious worship, one that fits neatly into a western cultures and is ever so inconspicuous? Should worship always be a dry-eyed experience in God’s presence while we cry at high school graduations? Should we be worried about messing our hair or makeup but willing to get messy to change the oil in our cars? And without purposely planning to be demonstrative if we go into a season of worship, corporate or private, and open our hearts with repentance, cleansing, and seeking His face, we will quickly find that we no longer care about anything. In those times God’s Spirit has suspended this reality and we are carried into the mystery of His very presence. Some claim His presence is in the elements of communion. Other’s claim His presence can be in the waters of baptism. Still others claim His presence is in one of the Spirit’s gifts.

Oh no, the presence of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords can never be reduced to ceremony or embolism. His real and actual presence remains a mystery, offered in part and yet the whole, experienced and yet only by faith, tangible and yet ethereal, building up and tearing down, a glimpse and yet panoramic, a taste and yet overflowing, the presence of the Great God and our Savior Jesus Christ is the one and only heart’s desire of everyone who has tasted of His redemptive presence. And standing before Him in robes of white, dipped in blood, we should be stripped of ourselves, loosed from the grave clothes of dry, emotionless, and ritualistic worship, and as a redeemed marionette completely at the control of the Spirit’s strings, we should recklessly worship Him Who was so reckless for us.

In worship the term “Reasonable service” would be an insult.

Reckless fits much better.