Worship: An Emotional Experience
Dr. Charles Stanley, drawing from Isaiah chapter 6, teaches that true worship is not just lip service but an emotional, spiritual experience that flows from the heart. God’s primary goal in all His Old Testament instructions and institutions, such as the Tabernacle, was to teach men to worship Him and understand His holiness. This understanding of God’s nature is essential for the believer’s life and must be cultivated beyond mere religious activity.
I. Worship as an Emotional Experience: Awareness and Awe
Stanley stresses that worship is fundamentally an emotional experience. It is something we feel in our relationship with God that prompts a bodily and spiritual response.
The Awareness of God’s Presence
The initial step in worship is feeling the awareness of God’s presence.
- Spiritual Perception: We do not become aware of God’s presence with the mind, but with the spirit. To perceive God’s presence, believers must function and live “down here in our spirits”.
- The Condition of the Spirit: The ability to sense God’s presence is not dependent on physical location, but on the condition of the spirit. If believers are too busy or active in worldly pursuits, they risk missing Him.
- A Frightening Reality: Stanley recounts an experience in seminary where he was so overwhelmingly aware of God’s presence that he was frightened and had to stop praying. This awareness is profound and sometimes inexplicable, but the individual “just know[s] that God is here”.
Awe Before God’s Holiness
True worship requires believers to be awestruck before the holiness of God.
- Reverence and Wonder: To be awed means to stand in wonder, amazement, inspiration, reverence, and fear before Him.
- The Failure of Infantile Concepts: Many people fail to worship God because they are not awed by Him. They hold an ignorant concept of Him, viewing Him as some “old rich antiquated grandfather sitting out yonder in space somewhere who’s full of mercy and that’s all,” only to be called upon when desperate.
- Worship Requires Awe: “What does not awe you you will not worship”. Worship demands that we see God as beyond us completely and totally.
Isaiah’s vision of the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty, high, and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple, caused him to see God filling the whole place. The Seraphim angels, ministering angels of fire, covered their faces in the presence of this absolute holiness and covered their feet in humility, while using two wings to fly, serving God continuously.
II. Adoration, Humility, and Self-Examination
Isaiah’s experience illustrates the proper emotional responses to encountering God’s holiness: adoration and profound humility.
Adoring the Majesty of God
Isaiah saw the throne of God high, lofty, and lifted up, yet adored Him. To adore the Lord is to love Him.
- Expressed Love: If we adore and love God, we will express it with our total life.
- Patience and Tolerance: The more we understand who God is, the more we will have to pray for patience, tolerance, compassion, and love toward people who despise the one we love the most.
Humility and Self-Realization
The awe-inspiring holiness of God leads to a powerful conviction and humility, forcing the worshiper to confront their own sinful nature. Isaiah’s response to God’s presence was recoil, similar to Moses removing his shoes on holy ground.
- “Woe is Me”: The foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of the Seraphim. Isaiah cried out, “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips. I’m undone. I’m ruined“.
- Seeing the True Self: This emotional experience forced Isaiah to see himself for the first time “like he really and truly was”.
