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There
is a little plant called reverence
in the corner of my
soul's garden,
which
I love to have watered once a week.
Oliver Wendell Holmes |
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worship
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If
God's people hunger deeply enough, God will hear and send
revival.
God requires more than casual prayers for
revival. He wants His people
to hunger and thirst for His
mighty working. To seek God's face is far more
than
occasionally mentioning revival in our prayer. It
involves repeated
and prolonged prayer. It requires holy
determination in prayer,
examining ourselves to see if
anything in our lives is hindering God.
Wesley Duewel
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Before there can be fullness
there
must be emptiness.
Before God can fill us with
Himself
we must first be
emptied of ourselves.
A.W. Tozer
The
church can have light
only as it is full
of the Spirit,
and it can be full only as
the members that compose
it
are filled individually.
A.W. Tozer
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A boy was
born 'mid little things
Between a little world and sky--
And dreamed not of the cosmic rings
Round which the circling planets fly.
He lived in little works and thoughts,
Where little ventures grow and plod,
And paced and plowed his little plots
And prayed unto his little God.
But as the mighty systems grew,
His faith grew faint with many scars;
His Cosmos widened in his view--
But God was lost among His stars. |
Another boy in lowly days
As he, to little things was born,
And gathered lore in woodland ways
And from the glory of the morn.
As wider skies broke on his view
God greatened in his growing mind;
Each year he dreamed his God anew
And left his older God behind.
He saw the boundless scheme dilate
In star and blossom, sky and clod;
And as the universe grew great
He dreamed for it a greater God. |
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Sam Foss |
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I worship best when
I'm climbing a
mountain, or walking along a river, or sitting at the
edge of a lake, for then all of God's glory is before me
and about me; it all becomes a part of me as my senses
expand to accept it all. There always comes a
moment of exultation when I realize that this is what it's
all about--the beauty of the world in which we live, the
beauty that was created for us to enjoy, to marvel at, to
live in. God must be very sad indeed to watch us
turn our backs on the beauty of the world in order to
work longer hours so that we can gain more material goods.
The moment of exultation that comes upon me in such
places is followed almost immediately by a state of
exultation, in which I feel that I'm a vital part of this
world, of the universe, of God.
And that's when I worship best, for
that's when my faith is the strongest--the mountains and
trees and rivers don't worry about the passage of time,
about aging, about changes, about whether or not I have
the latest in digital technology or whether I have a cool
car or a geeky car. The mountains simply are, and
that's how I see God at those times of worship--God
simply is, and though we can explain away the presence of
the mountains through the action of tectonic plates, that
doesn't diminish by one iota their majesty or beauty or
power. At those times, I love life fully, and I love God fully, for the surroundings with which he's
blessed me are truly wonderful.
In the city, I have a slightly more
difficult time worshipping. Tailgaters, cynics, nay-sayers,
critics--these kinds of people tend to take our focus off
of the glory of the lives we have and force us to deal
with unpleasantness in our lives. I don't like that,
and though I'm getting better at dealing with it, I still
focus a bit too much on the negative. I need to
keep my mind focused on the fact that I am an eternal
being, and that this life on earth is a temporary state,
and once it ends, I won't be asked how often I was right
or wrong or what I had for possessions, but how much time I spent in worship, how much time
I spent helping my
fellow human beings as a form of worship.
I want to answer truly that I tried
to live my life in a constant state of worship, with my
eyes open to the beauty just as a child's eyes are open
to the beauty and wonder of the world. And that
each time I saw beauty, I gave thanks to God that that
beauty was a part of my life. That's worship.
I want to answer truly that I spent
my time in corporate worship, in church or in prayer
groups, helping other people in their faith, supporting
them as much as I could, teaching them the little I knew,
and learning from them of what they knew.
I want to answer truly that there was
a point in my life at which I gave my life to God as a
form of worship--after all, he created me, so why should I hold back from Him something that
he himself made?
Worship is beautiful if we allow it
to be. If it's stagnant, repetitive ceremony and
nothing more, then it's worth little, to God or to us.
Find those things that you find beautiful, and
devote yourself to finding the wonder in them. Even
more challenging, find those things you don't find
beautiful, and look deeply to find the beauty and wonder--that
which can and should be worshipped--in all things. |
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My
times of silence before God are very important to me now.
I put everything else down, every word away, and I am
with the Lord. When
I'm quiet, life falls into perspective for me.
I have a very active mind and I'm a worrier, but in
those moments when I choose to put that away, I rest beside
the Shepherd in still places.
Why don't you give yourself a gift today?
Turn off the television or the car stereo, put down the
newspaper or the business plan, and in the quietness, rest for
a while beside the Shepherd of your soul.
Sheila
Walsh |
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Worship
is yet another paradox of the religious life:
it is simultaneously
the greatest duty and the greatest pleasure of faith.
Worship is the act
of truly loving God.
Believe in this brilliant Being, this magnificent
“higher power,” who not only created us but nurtures us with care
and intelligence beyond our imagination, and obviously we are called
to worship Him.
M. Scott Peck |
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The
law of giving and receiving is fundamental, and relates just as much
to God as it does to us.
As we go through the door of giving ourselves
to God in worship we find that God comes through that same door
and gives Himself to us.
God’s insistence that we worship Him is not really
a demand at all but an offer—an offer to share Himself with us.
When God
asks us to worship Him, He is asking us to fulfill the deepest longing
in Himself,
which is His passionate desire to give Himself to us.
It is what Martin Luther called “the joyful exchange.”
Selwyn Hughes |
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The soul suffers when
we lack reverence. We live in an age that
understands respect--respect earned through achievement, power,
or actions. We live in an age that understands rights,
obligations,
and sets of commitments. But we have difficulty experiencing
reverence because it comes from a deeper place. Reverence
requires
an experience of "otherness," the "thou-ness" of
that other who crosses our path.
D. Stephenson Bond |
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Those
to whom worshipping is a window,
to open but also to shut, have not
yet visited the house of their souls whose
windows are open from dawn to dawn.
Khalil
Gibran |
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What
else can I do, a lame old man, but sing hymns to God?
If I were a nightingale, I would do the nightingale's part;
if I were a swan, I would do as a swan. But now I am a
rational creature, and I ought to praise God. This is my
work. I do it,
nor will I desert my post, so long as I am allowed to keep it.
And I ask you to join me in this same song.
Epictetus |
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