04 Disciplines of Quiet Time: Worship
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Last week we left off talking about the discipline of prayer in our quiet times, leaving us with three disciplines so far:
1. Read to Behold Glory
2. Meditate and Memorize (M&M)
3. Prayer
And today I want to introduce the fourth discipline of quiet time to you, which, if you couldn’t tell from the title, is worship.
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Now when you think of worship the first thing that I think comes to mind for most people is singing songs on a Sunday morning in the pews at church. And yes, of course that’s worship. But worship is not just limited to that. Worship is so much more.
I like how John Piper describes worship: he says ‘worship is a seeing, a savoring, and an expressing of the worth of God’. And when you think of that definition in regards to our series a lot of what we have talked about is woven into that.
For example Piper says at the beginning of his definition that worship is a spiritual seeing…like that’s the disciplines of reading to behold glory and prayer right there.
The spiritual seeing is the action of us reading to behold God’s glory (which was the first discipline), and that spiritual seeing extends to the discipline of prayer when we pray for God to open the eyes of our heart, which we talked about last week, so that we can behold wondrous things out of His Word, as well as have revelation of His character and His presence.
But it's not just that. Piper goes on to say that worship is a savoring of what you have spiritually seen according to its true worth.
That word savoring means to taste and enjoy completely. And when you savor something, say your favorite dessert, which for me would be brownies and ice cream, you take your time eating it right? Because you want to savor, or enjoy, the moment, or the dessert. And that’s what meditation and memorization (M&M) is. M&M is the dessert, both figuratively and literally. It's the savoring of your time with God. It’s the process of us completely enjoying the Word we received through our bible study earlier that week or day.
So by reading to behold glory, by meditating and memorizing, and by praying…by carrying out those three spiritual disciplines, you are worshiping God.
However, that said, Piper says worship is not just a spiritual seeing and savoring of the worth of God, but that it's also an expression of it.
Notice he doesn’t say worship is a spiritual seeing, savoring, AND/OR expressing of the worth of God. No, Piper does not fragment or separate them. He says worship is all three. So what does that mean? Well, as of now in our quiet time disciplines we have talked about the worshiping aspects of seeing and savoring the worth and glory of God, but we need to discuss what it means to express that in order to have all three aspects of worship.
In other words, we need to discuss our response. See it’s one thing just to read God’s Word, it’s one thing to spend time with Him, but it's a whole other thing to respond to it and to Him. And that’s what the expression part of worship is. It’s our response. It’s our response to the revelation, the beholding, the seeing of God’s glory.
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And again when you think of the expression of God’s glory as a means of worship you probably think of singing. And don’t get me wrong, you can absolutely do that as part of your quiet time.
In fact, the Psalmist in Psalm 47 encourages us to do that saying in verse 6:
‘Sing praises to God, sing praises! Sing praises to our King, sing praises!’
So yes, singing is 100% a response in worship.
But, like I said earlier, expressing God’s glory and His worth is not limited to singing…we truly can worship in so many different ways. And we see that in Scripture. Because when we look to Scripture, what we see is, depending on the person and their personality, we see many different expressions, or responses, to God’s glory.
For example, if you remember in the first episode of this series on the discipline of ‘Reading to Behold Glory’, we looked through David’s writing in Psalm 63 where he said in v1 and 2:
‘O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. 2 So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory.’.
Now if you remember in that episode we talked about how David is elaborating exactly on the heart of quiet time. It’s a heart that desires God earnestly, as David does, and because of that, it’s a heart that chooses to behold God’s power and glory, as David does. And I talked more on that in that first episode, but what I didn't talk about was what David did after beholding God’s power and glory, and that is the fact he responded.
David responds to his beholding of God and His power and glory in the next two verses, verses 3 & 4, where he says:
‘Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. 4 So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands’.
Did you catch that?
Because of David’s time spent beholding God’s power and glory, he has a revelation of the Lord’s love for him in verse 3. Then what does he do? He responds. And he responds in two ways: first he responds through his words, saying at the end of verse 3 that his lips will praise God. And second, he responds in verse 4 saying in the Lord’s name he will lift up his hands.
So there’s David’s response. It’s the raising of hands and the verbal praise of God.
And maybe that’s how you respond to God’s power and glory. But if that’s not how you feel led to respond, you can respond differently. You can respond by for example kneeling before the Lord in reverence and humility.
That’s what the Psalmist does in worship in Psalm 95:6…in that verse he says:
‘Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!’
You see, bowing down is worship. But some of you may not be led to respond in worship by doing that, but you may be moved to clap your hands, just like the Psalmist does in Psalm 47:1.
In that verse he says:
‘Clap your hands, all peoples! Shout to God with loud songs of joy!’
But hey, maybe clapping isn’t your kinda thing. Maybe you like to swing and flail your arms around instead in like a dancing motion…well then perfect because you can also dance as a response in worship.
Scripture says in 2 Samuel 6:14 that David ‘danced before the LORD with all his might’ as an expression of worship.
Additionally, the Psalmist of Psalm 149 writes in verse 3:
‘Let them praise his name (that name being the Lord’s) with dancing, making melody to him with tambourine and lyre!’
And here’s the thing: if you know me you know I love to dance, and I respond in that way to the Lord in worship ALL. THE. TIME.
BUT, but but but, I know some of you listening absolutely hate dancing and you hate it because you don’t feel like God gave you a lick of rhythm.
And guess what? If you don’t feel like dancing as a response in worship you can just stand still. That’s right. You can stand still as a response in worship.
The Psalmist in Psalm 119:120 writes
‘My flesh trembles in fear of you; I stand in awe of your laws.’
This verse is part of the reason why many churches stand for the reading of Scripture, because it can be an expression of worship.
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Now my point in showing you all of this is twofold: one, I want you to realize that you can respond in worship of God and His glory in so so many different ways. You can sing, you can play instruments, you can shout, you can kneel, you can clap, you can dance, you can weep, you can stand still, you can look up. You can respond in worship of God and His glory in SO many different ways. So that’s the first reason why I say all of this.
But I also say all of this to help you see what matters to God:
What matters more to God is not so much how you respond, it’s just THAT you respond.
Like Piper said, worship is an expression of the worth of God. So that means no expression = no worship. So by choosing not to respond you are effectively choosing not to worship God. And believe it or not, you can look Jesus straight in the face and never worship Him. Just look at the Pharisees. Like, it’s possible! You can do that! You can read the Word of God your whole life, you can read about Jesus, you can know about Jesus, you can look Him straight in the face your whole life and never worship Him for who He truly is.
And that’s the biggest reason why worship is a discipline of quiet time. Yes, the spiritual seeing and savoring of God and His glory are so crucial to worship, you absolutely cannot worship with that, but also you cannot worship without expression. You CANNOT worship without response.
And so our quiet times need that. They need to contain some form of response by us.
So what now? Maybe you’re listening and you want to know how to respond to this specific podcast. Maybe you’ve never included the expression or response aspect of worship in your quiet times and so you’re asking yourself: How do I respond to the Lord in worship during my quiet times? Do I kneel in prayer before I read the Word? Do I do that after? Do I raise my hands as I read the Bible? Do I shout ‘AMEN’ after reading Scripture that connects with me? Do I really need to stand up and stand still as I read God’s Word? Or do I need to get up and do a little boot-scootin-boogie dance after my time with God? Like what should I do to respond in my quiet times?
And my encouragement to you is yes. Yes. I’d encourage you to do all of the above. The most freeing worship, the most intimate worship of God, includes all the responses we’ve laid out in this podcast, not just one.
And so I would encourage you to respond as you feel led by the Spirit. And for me, that means my response is almost always different. Sometimes I’m shouting ‘AMEN’, other times I’m dancing. Sometimes I get emotional, either through tears or ear to ear smiles. Sometimes I’ll play the guitar or the box drum I have. And sometimes it’s just prayer.
Like I said yesterday, I’ll end my quiet times with prayer and obviously that’s a response in worship.
All in all, your response to your interaction with God’s character and glory in quiet time can be as grand or as miniscule as you feel led, you just need to respond.
And hey, if you’ve never included this aspect of worship in your quiet time, the response, don’t pressure yourself to do so.
Your response should never be something done out of duty, it’s always an action that is done out of desire.
And if you are reading and you don’t have that desire, that’s okay. I encourage you to exercise the discipline of prayer and pray for the Lord to create in you a desire to respond to Him; for a desire to express your love for Him; To GROW your love for Him…And I promise you He’ll answer that. He will. So if that is you start there.
Anyways, I love you guys and I’ll see you next episode.
God bless.
