Founder's Muse October 2019

A great big welcome to March's Founder's Muse. This Month my attention is drawn to the book 'Unceasing Worship', by Harold M Best.

I started to read the book and to my amazing surprise, the book opened by unleashing an in depth look into what we call worship and how primitive that perception is in our goal in understanding what exactly real worship is.

The author suggests that the subject of worship is limited to what happens in the corporate assembly in its assigned times and places. The author then goes on to suggest that all of life is worship, and that there is little significance to demonstrate how this is so. We are then brought into the realisation that our outline and what we perceive as worship is limited by the fact that all studies show that it is on time and place of worship that most talks and discussions focus on. The author then proceeds to introduce us to two basic types of worship, contemporary worship, or praise and worship.

The interesting thing is that the author outlines the distinction between contemporary worship as being praise and worship. Further, indicating that the opening segment of worship is in fact the overriding theme and that the rest of the service is something else.

We are told that there is a second separation, and that it is narrower and derived from the first this is in the format of music, which to many leaders and lay person turns out to be worship.

We are then made to realise that the problem with this is that the glorious and inescapable glory of worshipping God in variegated and integrated continuity is overlooked. What is illustrated by this book is that Worship is an intimate act and it is not to be considered finite, but infinite and never ending. There are ministries out there that encourage unceasing worship. If you think in terms of what we owe God, and that worship is the currency of how we pay God, then you can clearly see that limiting Worship to a time, place and fragment of a service, and by defining worship as simply the first part of a service and music is not sufficient. We need to educate ourselves on this topic and truly understand the true meaning of worship so that we may pay God back all that is due to him.

Look out for March’s Blog on the 24th of this month. as we continue this investigation, by turning to scripture.

In HIs Service,

Angela D. Martin

Founder, Vine Ministry UK