The Art of Worship. Fred Bittner

The Art of Worship

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The Art of Worship

A Believer’s Guide to

the Fulfilled Life

Fred Bittner

Published by 2t2 Ministries, Parker, Colorado.

On the web at www.2t2ministries.org

ISBN: 978–0–9856992–5–3

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture references are taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Other versions are identified as follows:

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

This book is dedicated to my wife, Kimberly, who always sees the best in me and inspires the best from me. Thank you for supporting me during the writing process.

Thanks also to Dean Christensen, my copyeditor and encourager. Dean has a biblical background, which helps his copyediting skills. He has been nothing but supportive from the moment I called him with the idea of beginning 2t2 Ministries.

Foreword

In his classic work, Worship: Rediscovering the Missing Jewel, Ronald Allen declared that the essence of worship is the celebration of God. He said, “When we worship God we celebrate Him: We extol Him, we sound His praises, we boast in Him.” That’s all very well, but the logical questions raised are, What does that look like? and Exactly how do we do that?

In the book you are about to read, Fred Bittner answers those questions using the Scriptures and examples from contemporary life. The celebration of God—worship—is an art. As an art, it takes various forms. It is far more than the activities Christians typically do inside the four walls on Sunday mornings (although it includes that, as Fred skillfully discusses). The art of worship also includes how we live life on Monday morning, and on Tuesday evening, and every day! It even involves how we use our money and how we handle the spiritual warfare that all believers experience. Every aspect of life for the Christian is—or can be—a form of worship. Fred shows us this in easily digestible chapters and includes suggestions for practical application at the end of each.

Read and be blessed as you learn how to view all of life as worship, and worship as an art.

Dean Christensen

March 2013

Section 1

Worship and the Christian

Chapter 1: The Art of Worship

“I can safely say, on the authority of all that is revealed in the Word of God, that any man or woman on this earth who is bored and turned off by worship is not ready for heaven.” (A. W. Tozer)

We all believe in something. Our beliefs shape who we are and how we act. There are beliefs that we profess but give up when something better comes along. Then there are beliefs that we would stake our lives on. It is easy to express a belief in God, but if that belief remains nothing more than mere words, then life is wasted, no matter how many other good things we may have done. The question is, Would we stake our lives on our belief in God?

A fulfilled life, a committed life, is about loving God and experiencing the promises that come with a relationship with him. Worship is the key to how we build a life of loving God. But if our worship doesn’t help, then we’re not learning to live. Let’s get real. If our relationship with God is not growing, then we need a new grasp on worship!

Say this word aloud: Worship. It is a great word, isn’t it? It tugs at the emotions and makes us feel good. Worship rolls off the tongue so smoothly. The word appears 254 times in the New International Version of the Bible. Abraham was said to have worshiped in Genesis 22. Worship continued throughout the Scripture clear to the end of Revelation when the angel told John to worship God. We use the word on a regular basis in church. But to use the word worship does not mean that every person interprets the word in the same way. So, before we can learn about worship, we must first establish a working definition of the word itself.

A. W. Tozer once proclaimed, “I wonder if there was ever a time when true spiritual worship was at a lower ebb. To great sections of the church, the art of worship has been lost entirely, and in its place has come that strange and foreign thing called the ‘program.’ This word has been borrowed from the stage and applied with sad wisdom to the public service, which now passes for worship among us.”1 In the more than sixty years since Tozer gave us this statement, we have not been very successful in adequately reestablishing the meaning of worship.

We gain a small glimpse of how to worship by looking at the Psalms:

“Come, let us bow down in worship,

let us kneel before the LORD our Maker;” (Psalm 95:6)

“Worship the LORD in the splendor of his holiness;

tremble before him, all the earth.” (Psalm 96:6)

“Worship the LORD with gladness;

come before him with joyful songs.” (Psalm 100:2)

“With my mouth I will greatly extol the LORD;

in the great throng of worshipers I will praise him.” (Psalm 109:30)

Bowing down, kneeling, trembling, singing and being glad, and praising him with the mouth are all a part of worship. When was the last time you trembled because you felt God’s power in your life? How often do you bow down before the Lord in your quiet time? Better yet, how often are you actually glad that you have the privilege of going before the Lord in prayer and devotion? Certainly, there is more to worship than these few words.

In today’s contemporary lingo, we use the word worship as a time when the church has a corporate gathering. We substitute the word singing with the word worship. When the leader says, “Let’s worship,” we know that we are going to sing. But, isn’t prayer a part of worship, too? How about the preaching of the word? Is that worship? Is meeting together as a congregation considered worship? We observed Tozer’s concern about worship. It is clear that he considered gathering with the body of believers as vital to worship. “Has it ever occurred to you,” he wrote, “that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshipers meeting together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become ‘unity’ conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. Social religion is perfected when private religion is purified.”2

Southeast Christian Church in Parker, Colorado, is a church of close to 4,000 in weekly attendance. Jeff Percival is the worship pastor at the church. We talked about his perspective on worship. Jeff says, “the most important component in a worship service is worship itself. To worship God is to say to Him that He is good, that He is worthy . . . to proclaim His supreme value to Him and everyone else. This could be with or

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