Essentials of An Effective
Worship Service[1]
Every
time I read 2 Chronicles 20, I wish I could have been present to experience
that worship service. Of course, that is not possible. But what is possible is
to learn from Jehoshaphat and the people of Judah. What did they do during that
service? How did they prepare? What made that worship gathering so successful
and powerful? Certainly God did, and still does, the supernatural part, the
life-changing part. But what does God expect from us? What is our part?
This
week we will look at five distinct principles in our foundational story that
are also necessary within our worship services each week. For our worship
services to be the most God-honoring and effective, we can't leave out even one
of these.
Conveniently,
all of these elements start with the letter “p.” They are prayer, planned
spontaneity, pliableness, power of the Spirit, and pastoral direction. Let's
start by looking at the first priority: prayer.
I.
Prayer
What
we desperately need to happen in our worship services is for God to move off
the pages of or orders of worship and into the hearts of our congregation.
Dwight L. Moody remarked that “every work of God can be traced to some kneeling
form.”[2]
A.T. Pierson, a Bible teacher in the 18th century, once observed
that , “no revival has ever come about but by united supplicatory praying as in
Acts, and no revival has ever continued beyond that same kind of praying.”[3]
The
children of Judah positioned themselves to hear “from heaven.” Look at 2
Chronicles 20:2, 13:
“So Judah gathered together to seek help from the Lord;
they even came from all the cities of Judah to seek the Lord...All Judah was standing before the Lord, with their
infants, their wives and their children.”
Jehoshaphat obviously understood that prayer is indispensable.
That's why he called all the people to fast and pray rather than to run and
fight. If they had not heard from God, they wouldn't have known what to do to
win the battle. Furthermore, I believe God honored their determination to seek
Him first (according to Matthew 6:33, He still does).
Not only did prayer have an effect on the outcome of their
dilemma, it also had a profound effect on them. In fact, at least three results
of personal and corporate prayer are revealed in this passage.
First, prayer puts our focus where
it belongs: on God.
When Jehoshaphat prayed, “We do not know what to do, but our eyes
are upon you” (2 Chronicles 20:12b), he was placing all their faith and hope in
the Lord. I can't begin to count the time I have run around just minutes before
a service trying to get all the details together. Then I am gently reminded to
pray.
Carol Cymbala, director of the great Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir,
said, “God can only bless people who are in tune...with Him and with one
another. That is why we begin every choir practice with a season of
prayer...The choir's ability to minister can never be better than their
spiritual tone.”[4]
According to 2 Chronicles 20:13, even after Jehoshaphat had
finished his prayer, every man, woman, and child remained standing, waiting to
hear from the Lord. Apparently they had been in that position before:
desperately needing a word from God. They somehow knew to listen for His
instructions.
The second result is prayer
sensitizes us to God's voice.
As we studied last week, if there is one skill more important than
any other for a praise leader or pastor, it is the ability to listen and
recognize the voice of the Shepherd. Worshipers should be so familiar and
sensitive to His speaking that the slightest prompting is recognized and
heeded. I cannot over-emphasize this. I believe that the more we learn to
listen to God's voice and obey Him without hesitation, the more God will
entrust to us opportunities to lead His people in praise.
Verse 13 implies that the people of Judah were silent before the
Lord for a long period of time. This is a powerful idea, especially today, when
we seem surrounded by noise from the television, cell phone, stereo-something.
It's rare to see a person walking quietly alone in a park or sitting silently
by a stream. Some of us actually avoid being quiet.
Yet it's in the solitude of silence that we most often hear from
God. In his book, Intimacy with the Almighty, Charles Swindoll writes,
“If we refuse to provide pockets of silence in our lives, we will always
flounder in a fog, wondering who God is and what he's doing...But if we
deliberately fashion protracted periods of silence, we will grow deeper in an
increasing awareness of the real presence of God.”[5]
Let me encourage you to set aside some time each week to listen to
God. I know how busy life is. When you have demanding jobs, children to raise,
supper to fix, laundry to wash, soccer games to attend, homework to do, and
chores around the house, who has time to just sit around and do nothing? I
understand. Your spiritual life is such a vital part of who you are that it is
not time wasted. Maybe it is just 30 minutes on a Saturday morning before the
kids wake up. Great! Use it. Have your Bible, a notebook or journal, and pen
beside you. Write down what God shows you. You're thinking, “Bryan I need all
the sleep I can get!” Okay, what about 20 minutes on a Saturday morning? The
point is start somewhere. Even if it's only 15-20 minutes do it! Build from
there. This time alone is of utmost importance!
The third outcome of prayer is that
it gets results.
God heard, answered, and saved His people as a result of their
prayers. We have in our possession the same powerful and effective tool.
Matthew 7:7-8 (NASB):
7 “Ask,
and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and
it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and
to him who knocks it will be opened.”
1 John 5:14-15 (NASB):
“This is the confidence which we have before Him,
that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 15 And
if we know that He hears us in whatever
we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.”
Without a doubt Billy Graham will be remembered by many as the
most significant Christian of the 20th century. His crusades have
reached millions for Christ. Dr. Graham attributes this great success to
prayer. One of his favorite and most famous quotes is, “The three most
important things we can do for a Crusade are to pray, to pray, and to pray.”[6]
Sterling Huston, Dr. Graham's longtime Director of Crusades, tells
the story of a service during the 1984 Alaska Crusade in which Dr. Graham was
struggling with a throat problem. As he started to preach, his voice gave out
without warning. Many people immediately began to pray. Dr. Graham called on
someone else to preach in his stead that night. When Dr. Graham returned to the
podium to give the invitation he could barely speak. Even so, they had one of
the largest responses of the entire week that night. As Sterling Huston
explains it, “A Team member said to Billy Graham, 'The Lord received glory for
Himself tonight.' Mr. Graham's response was, 'Yes, He did, and it shows where
the real power comes from!'”[7]
It's no wonder that prayer is the most necessary element for an
effective worship service. That's where “the real power comes from!”
My Daily Praise
Meditate on Matthew 7:7-8 and 1 John 5:14-15. Write a prayer of
thanksgiving and praise to God for hearing and answering your prayers.
My Daily Surrender
The key to the success of the children of Judah's prayer was their
consecration. Prayer for them was indeed a lifestyle. E.M. Bounds writes,
“Consecration is really the setting apart of one's self to a life of prayer. It
means not only to pray, but to pray habitually, and to pray more
effectually...Consecration brings answer to prayer...God can afford to commit
Himself to those who have fully committed themselves to Him in prayer.”[8]
So, how is your lifestyle been lately? Are you fully committed to
prayer? If so, write a prayer asking God to keep you clean and faithful. If
not, confess and surrender completely to God.
[1] This material comes from DeWayne Moore's
book, Pure Praise (Loveland, CO: Group Publishing, 2009), 74-76.
[2] Sterling W. Huston, Crusade Evangelism
and the Local Church (Minneapolis, MN: World Wide Publications, 1986), 49.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Jim Cymbala, Fresh Power (Grand
Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2001), 99.
[5] Charles R. Swindoll, Intimacy with the
Almighty (Anaheim, CA: Insight for Living, 1996), 20.
[6] Sterling W. Huston, Crusade Evangelism
and the Local Church, 49.
[7] Ibid., 49-50.
[8] E.M. Bounds, The Essentials of Prayer
(Springdale, PA: Whitaker House, 1994), 96.E
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