[Worship] Daily Worship Thought - 9 May 1998

[Worship Quote <kgentes@praise.net>]

TITLE: Public & Private Worship

Editor's note: today's thought is by Keith Scherer. He is the director
of worship at Naperville Presbyterian Church. Many of us have heard how
our public worship should be an outward expression of our lives of
private devotion to God. Keith challenges us to think about this from
another perspective, and to broaden our value of the corporate
gatherings, allowing God to train us in being "living sacrifices" by the
example of our local church. This was a different view than I had heard
on this subject, and it is well presented. Thanks Keith!

There's a connection between corporate worship and our personal daily
worship. We've often had a debate about what is worship ranging from the
corporate acts usually celebrated on Sunday morning to the also
appropriate "presenting our bodies as living sacrifices" a la Romans 12.

I believe that as we engage in the corporate spiritual discipline of
worship (and I mean truly engage, not just going through the motions)
then we become the kind of worshippers in which worship is our true
ethos, our way of living, of being true living sacrifices to the glory
of God. (And of course it works the other way around. As we grow in our
daily worship, we approach the "doing" of worship corporately with that
much more passion for the presence of God.)

I want to suggest that sometimes the beginning place of growth in
worship for an individual is the corporate setting. As someone is
captured by the Spirit in the context of corporate worship, this extends
then to their daily life. The Puritans had the belief that they gathered
for Sunday public worship in order to be refreshed for the daily
personal worship. I like that. I've experienced that.

I'm not talking here of just liking the music. I'm talking of
experiencing God so powerfully in public worship that I'm changed
throughout the week for His glory.

Keith Scherer
Director of Worship
Naperville Presbyterian Church
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