True Worshipers: Seeking What Matters to God

by Bob Kauflin

“If worshipers are not consciously dependent upon the Holy Spirit, their worship is not truly Christian.”

“Objectively, what brings us into the presence of God is the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus.” He warns that if we start thinking it’s our worship activities that bring God’s presence near, “it will not be long before we think of such worship as being meritorious, or efficacious, or the like.”

Only Jesus can lead us into God’s presence, and he accomplished that through his substitutionary death, which forever removed the curtain of God’s judgment that separated us from his presence

Encountering God generally bears the fruit of things like a greater hunger for his Word, a deeper love for the Savior, and a greater passion for a holy life. God can use music to affect us emotionally, but music will never mediate his presence. Only Jesus can do that.

The root cause of our prayerlessness is often not laziness, but pride.

But the best part about heaven won’t be the landscape, the activities, or the friends we’ll recognize from this life. It will be finally beholding the face of the One who left his throne to redeem us. We’ll look into his eyes and know instantly that no pleasure on earth compares with his love. We’ll hear his voice singing over us and perhaps watch him create new worlds for us to rule over. And we’ll be with him. With. Him.

Both are marked by full engagement and find their fulfillment in worshiping together as the people of God in God’s presence (Rev. 4:10; 5:9, 11, 13; 7:11; 21:3).

David Powlison explains it like this: “Everything that is now incomplete, semi-conscious, tainted, and half-baked will then be complete, clear-minded, holy, and utterly fulfilled. We and God will inherit each other, will possess each other, will share together in His glory. We live in this hope.”3

If we fully understand what’s at stake when we talk about worship, we’ll have a hard time treating it casually. We are given only two choices in life—to worship God or idols. There are no other options. And to worship anything but God is rebellion against his rule and a rejection of his sovereign love.

The age to come won’t be the opposite of what we seek now, but the fulfillment of it. So we pursue holiness.