In 1992 some friends and I attended a Regional Worship Leaders Institute Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. The first evening of the conference worship leader/song writer Steve Fry shared a conversation that took place between him and God. I can’t remember every detail of the story, but the main points had an impact on my view of worship.
Steve said he had told God that as much as he loved him, he believed he would get bored doing as the four living creatures in heaven who continually cry, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, Who was, Who is and Who is to come.” He wondered how these creatures could do this and never get tired. The Lord told him that as these creatures worship him he gets so excited that he has to reveal a little more of himself to them. When he does the creatures get so excited they begin their worship all over again.
In his book Worship as Jesus Taught It, Judson Cornwall shares that after years of preaching and demonstrating praise and worship in his church the congregation had reached a peak in their worship experience. For one year he stopped preaching on praise and worship and began preaching on God. He writes, “As we saw God high and lifted up, our response also lifted up higher and higher, because worship is always a response to revelation. Fresh revelations produce fresh worship responses and higher revelations bring higher responses.”
Worship becomes our obvious response when we get a true revelation of the creator. Without a revelation of God it is impossible to worship him. Yet, once a person has a true revelation of the nature of God it is impossible not to worship him. There is so much more of God that he is ready to reveal, and with each new revelation comes a new worship response.
We get fresh revelations of God as we spend time with him and in bible study. A study of the life of Jesus reveals mounds of insight into the nature and character of God the Father. Jesus was God in the flesh, the express image of God himself.
Times of prayer and worship are a necessity in our quest to know more of God. As we spend time in his presence our knowledge of him increases as should our level of intimacy. This works much like a marriage as husband and wife learn more about each other by being together over the years.
The host of heaven, as recorded in The Revelation of Jesus Christ, are in the presence of God and the Lamb. Their only response is worship as he reveals himself to them. As God reveals himself to us our worship response will resemble the worship of heaven.