The Dangerous Duty of Delight

Terry signed up to be on the e-mail list at desiringgod.org and they sent him a nifty little booklet in the real mail called The Dangerous Duty of Delight by J.P. (Party with Piper!)

Here's a passage on worship that Terry read to me this morning that hit home for both of us:

First, the true diagnosis of weak worship is not that our people are coming to get and not give. Not a few pastors scold their people that the worship services would be lively if people came to give instead of to get. There is a better diagnosis.

People ought to come to corporate worship services to get. They ought to come starved for God. They ought to come saying, "As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for you, O God." (Psalm 42:1) God is profoundly honored when people know that they will die of hunger and thirst unless they have God. And it is my job as a preacher to spread a banquet for them. I must show them from Scripture what they are really starving for--God--and then feed them well until they say, "Ahhh." That is worship.

Second, seeing the essence of worship as satisfaction in God will make corporate worship radically God-centered.

Nothing makes God more supreme and more central than when people are utterly persuaded that nothing--not money or prestige or leisure or family or job or health or sports or toys or friends--is going to bring satisfaction to their aching hearts besides God. This conviction breeds people who go hard after God on Sunday morning.

If the focus shifts onto our giving to God, instead of His giving Himself to us, one result is that subtly it is not God who remains at the center but, instead, the quality of our giving. Are we singing worthily of the Lord? Are our instrumentalists playing with quality fitting a gift to the Lord? This all sounds noble at first. But little by little the focus shifts off the utter indispensability of the Lord Himself and onto the quality of our performances. And we even start to define excellence and power in terms of the technical distinction of our artistic acts.

Nothing keeps God at the center of worship like the biblical conviction that the essence of worship is deep, heartfelt satisfaction in Him and the conviction that the pursuit of that satisfaction is why we are together.