The Distracted Worshiper by Motte Brown on 09/25/2006 at 4:00 PM

During worship service at church yesterday, I began taking notes from the sermon, not for future reference or even to help me focus, but because I thought the lesson would make for good blogging. Obviously, my heart and my mind were not on loving God.

One reason it's easy for me to take corporate worship for granted is because I often congratulate myself for just showing up. While I'm there I allow my mind to wander about work or football or pancakes, content that I'm in the pew. And though there is some merit for attendance, it is certainly not worthy to be called worship.

William Temple describes well what worship is in his "Readings in St. John's Gospel."

Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His Beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose – and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin.

So instead of blogging about yesterday's sermon, I'm blogging about being awakened to my self-centeredness that prevented true worship as Temple characterizes above. Ironic.

HT: Bob Kauflin

The Distracted Worshiper by Motte Brown on 09/25/2006 at 4:00 PM

During worship service at church yesterday, I began taking notes from the sermon, not for future reference or even to help me focus, but because I thought the lesson would make for good blogging. Obviously, my heart and my mind were not on loving God.

One reason it's easy for me to take corporate worship for granted is because I often congratulate myself for just showing up. While I'm there I allow my mind to wander about work or football or pancakes, content that I'm in the pew. And though there is some merit for attendance, it is certainly not worthy to be called worship.

William Temple describes well what worship is in his "Readings in St. John's Gospel."

Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His Beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose – and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin.

So instead of blogging about yesterday's sermon, I'm blogging about being awakened to my self-centeredness that prevented true worship as Temple characterizes above. Ironic.

HT: Bob Kauflin