Monthly Archives: February 2013

Philosophy of ministry.

The surprising connection between glory and joy

Everett Harrison’s wrote an article on Glory in The New International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. This article happens to be a summary of his Ph.D. thesis on “Glory” and one of the richest resources in print on the glory of God. Harrison points to the connection between glory and joy, he writes:

“Quite naturally glory is closely associated with joy. The two elements mingle in the experience of the shepherds at the birth of Jesus (Luke 2:9f, 20) and in the acclaim given Him at the triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Luke 19:38) as well as the Savior’s expectation of return to the Father (Hebrews 12:2). Likewise the prospect of future glory evokes in the saints the response of joy (Romans 5:2; 1 Peter 4:13; and Jude 1:24).” (NISBE, Volume 2, 1982, p. 482.)

Glory and joy

Glory may seem to be some glimmering light from the Holy of Holies or the shouts and songs of the redeemed in Heaven. But to see glory as the source of great joy in those who experienced the presence of Christ in his day during the joyful entry of Christ into Jerusalem, and by the future glory that shall be experienced together with all those who are redeemed, and, furthermore, to know that the joy of Christ before the Father is part of the renewal of the glory of the Son and the reunion of the Trinity in the Heavenly place, all prove the wonderful and God-filled principle that glory always brings joy.

Glory is the root and foundation of all the joy we experience in Christ. It is the glory of God that celebrates the victory of Christ. It is glory that brings us to study and then to appreciate the person of God. It is glory that presses the work of salvation into our human hearts and makes them alive and able to praise and worship God. And it is glory that assures us of the truth of Christ’s rule both in us and soon over all persons and things and so we know that our future is to be filled and absolutely defined by the glory of God.

The joy we experience in Jesus Christ is a glorious joy because it is rooted in what God has done and in who he is. We are doxological (glory-centered) in all our worship. By glory we remember that our joy is not generated within the heart of man, but from God. It is not something that we possess in ourselves at all, but by Jesus Christ we are filled, as if by miracle, with the glory of God.

True joy is always linked to the actions of God; it is derived from what God has done and what he will do. By the work of glory there is absolute confidence in the work of Christ in the past, so we sing with the shepherds and angels, “Glory to God in the highest …” And we look at the work of Christ on the Cross and with much greater appreciation and far more insight that those shouting “Hosanna,” we who believe now know who the Savior is and we see that his coming to redeem was the most glorious act in all of eternity.

How can we not have joy when we read of his coming to redeem us? We understand more of his work and we now see with far greater detail the implication of his death for our salvation, and we are driven by its importance and glory to shout for joy at the display of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, especially as it shined forth in the Redeeming Cross of Christ. The Cross was the grandest display of the glory of God and therefore it is the most precious and articulate source of our joy in God. Nothing exceeds it.

The question then could be raised, If we have little joy, what do we lack? The answer is: We lack glory. If our joy is failing or fading, the way to remedy that joylessness is to study the glory of God.

When glory is grasped and when our minds understand and our hearts retain even small aspects of the glory of God (which is all we can contain), glory changes how we see everything. When glory is seen by faith we are filled so much with the work and the person of God that glory’s child — the joy of God — comes with inexpressible fullness to overwhelm our lives with a glorious joy. We cannot experience true joy apart the glory of God entering into our lives. Glory and joy are inseparable.

We fail to be joyful when we neglect or ignore the glory of God. Joylessness is a deficiency of glory. But remember, it is not joy that we seek. It is glory. It is glory that brings us joy. When we study the glory of God, we do not need to be reminded to be more joyful. We are given joy as an overflow of all that makes God glorious.

Seeing the glory of God makes us joyful. And it is always so. Glory brings us to joy.

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Bible Study

Four kinds of commands in Romans 12 and redeeming the word, “Whatever.”

This is preview of the sermon for Sunday February 24, 2013, (posted in Jan 2014) at Glorious Savior Church.This is the underlying study for the message.

There is a catechism, a teaching method, used by Paul in Romans 12, that used four different forms of the imperative. If this is a bit too technical, just skip down to the “Mundane application” section below.

An imperative is a command to do something.

In Romans 12, Paul uses four kinds of imperatives (commands). These forms are: the imperatival participle, the imperatival use of adjectives, the imperatival infinitive, and the imperatival verb to express commands and authorative teaching in this final, practical section of Romans. Each of these imperatives differ in their impact on the reason, on the heart, and on the will.

The participle imperative is used to direct how we are to live in certain circumstances. For example, in loving, it should be genuine; in giving, with generosity, and the like. There are 17 of these in Romans 12. They are given like a list of Rabbinical rules, not as commands so much as a code of conduct, also presenting an easy way of memorizing many rules (in love, let your love be…” Or “In the presence of true moral evil, hate the evil.” “In trouble, hold steady.” “In praying, be constant.” “When presented with the needs of others, share with them.” The commands focus on how we are to respond in certain challenging circumstances.

The imperatives also appear as adjectives that are constructed with a descriptor (“warmly-affectionate”) and with the missing verb, “you shall be,” added to the sentence, so the imperative in translated, “You shall be warmly affectionate in your love.” But the impact is not a suggestion, it is a command.

There are 3 occasions of the adjective without the ginesthe, “you shall be” or with the negative, “you shall not be. The imperatival adjectives appear in 12:10, 11, and 16. In each case, they address the attitudes of the believer in Christ:

“Be warmly affectionate; be untiring in zeal. do not be conceited.” The adjectives create a strong appeal to our emotions, they paint a picture of an ideal of our relationships and of our duties, toward which we reach. These imperatives become a means by which we can exhort one another toward certain godly attitudes and loving relationships.

Next is the imperatival infinitive. Romans 12:15, “You ought to rejoice with those who rejoice. You ought to weep with those who weep.” There is a sense of urgency. Paul uses this construction also in Philippians 3:16 and 2 Thessalonians 3:14, but It is infrequent in the New Testament.

Miller (see reference below) postulates that the distance between Paul and his readers limited the use of the stronger imperatives and more authorative commands. This command would be something that could be done at a distance, but still have a serious intent. When a person is face to face, that is when the verbal imperative (see below) is normally used. The imperatival infinitive created a strong appeal to the human conscience. “You ought to know and you ought to do … this.” It “encodes moral duty.”

The last type of command is the (expected) grammatical imperative. Here the writer gives a direct command, as speaking with authority and a directive to the will. A choice must be made. The command begins from the will of the writer (speaker) and it is directed to the will of the reader (hearer), demanding a response, a decision, or an action to be taken. This is the most forceful and directive means of address. The final imperatives change the person of the verb from the previous plural you (“you all”) to the singular you (“you alone”), see Romans 12:20-21.

“(You alone) Feed your enemy! (You alone) Give your enemy drink!” (quoting from Proverbs 25:21-22). The stronger level of command may also be from the authority of the Word of God since it was a quotation from Proverbs. But the second person singular (you alone) continues after the quotation, suggesting that there is a personal connection with these commands.

Here is my mundane application of this little study:

The commands and exhortations must be met with the understanding and desire on the part of the hearer to comply and to do what is commanded, if they are to have any effect. This was true for the Church in Rome and it is true for your teenager.

A teenager’s famous retort to the parent who asks him to pick up his room, is, “Whatever!” But in that single word is a wholesale rejection of the command.

This study showed many ways to construct a command. Rules and code of behavior, appeal to duty, accepting the authority of the speaker (writer), and more. We, and the teenager, must ask whether we will comply with the commands we have been given.

The imperative spoken to the teenager to “Pick up your room” implies that there is the authority and the expectation that the command be followed. When the teenager says, “Whatevaaar!” they are rejecting the authority of the parent and they are saying that they will not submit their will to do what you are requiring of them. This is exactly the same as when we receive a command from God and refuse to take it to heart.

The point is that God appeals to our reason, to our emotions, and to our will, that we might become the people he wants us to be. When we cry, “Whatever!” to God we are saying that his character is not important. When we fail to listen carefully to the duties of the Christian life, or when we dismiss our duty to our enemies, or neglect to share with someone in need, we are saying, “Whatever!” to God.

Living in obedience to the Word of God creates a tender and compliant heart. Doing all that God has commanded is a sweet place to be, or a place we should long to be.

Whatever can be a wonderful word. To God we say, “Whatever you command, I will do. Whatever it is. Whatever you ask me to be, I will gladly and lovingly seek after with all my heart, for your glory. Whatever.”

Source: Neva F. Miller, “The Imperativals of Romans 12,” in Linguistics and New Testament Interpretation: Essays on Discourse Analysis, ed. David Alan Black, with Katharine Barnwell and Stephen Levinsohn.

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Understanding Christ at the focus of God's glory.

Worship or entertainment?

NOTE: Interacting with John Owen on worship. Owen wrote a short study on the purpose and practice of worship. It contained a short catechism (a set of questions and answers). It brought into focus the issue of entertainment that is driving many worship experiences today and the need for the church to seek something higher and far better in our worship of God.

Worship has a specific and glorious purpose. But we may be absolutely certain that our entertainment was never conceived, nor was it ever in the mind of God that it should become in the least or smallest degree included in, or substituted for, the true and purposeful worship of Almighty God.

Entertainment is not the worship of God in any sense. It is the worship of man.

Here is Owen’s quotation:
“That we may profitably and comfortably, unto the glory of God and our own edification, be exercised in the observation of the institutions and worship of God, we are always to consider what are the ends for which God hath appointed them and commanded our attendance unto them, that so our observance of them may be the obedience of faith. For, what end soever God hath appointed them unto, for that end are they useful and effectual, and to no other.

If we come to them for any other end, if we use them for any other purpose or with any other design, if we look for any thing in them or by them, but what God hath appointed them to communicate unto us, we dishonor God and deceive our own souls.”

Owen, John (2012-10-02). Brief Instruction in the Worship of God (John Owen Collection) (Kindle Locations 204-209). Prisbrary Publishing. Kindle Edition.

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definitions of glory

Think about what you think about.

“Frequent thoughts discover root affections.”

Stephen Charnock, Works, Vol. 5, 461. A discourse on phronein, “to think.”

“For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.”

Romans 12:3

The frequency of your thought is a measure of what you value and how much you love. Want to measure the strength of your faith, ask, “How often do I think of God during the day?” Wonder how strong your love for your spouse (or good friend) is? Answer: “How often during the day do I think of her/him?” Want to know what it is that I value the most in my life? Answer: “What is it that I think about the most during the day?” That will tell you what is most important and what you love the most.

“Frequent thoughts discover root affections.” Your thoughts are not without consequence. It really matters what you think. No one does anything without thought. You think and then you act. What you think about makes you who you are and it determines everything you choose.

If you were asked, “What it is that you love?” You could answer, “This is what I think about the most. This is what I truly love: (and you’d fill in the answer here).”

What you frequently think about, mull over, contemplate, consider, puzzle about, those thoughts tell you what you value and what you love the most in your life. Your frequent thoughts reveal what is most important to you. Your frequent thoughts tell you what your heart loves. You can know how much you love God, people, and things by how frequently you think about them.

There could not be a simpler or more accurate measure of the health or disease of our spiritual life than to look at the frequency with which we think about God.

The world would tell you that you can think about anything and it will have no affect on you. But that is a lie. What you think about the most, is what you love the most. What you think about is what you want. What you think about most often is what you end up doing.

Your frequent thoughts reveal your “root affections.” What you think about reveals your deepest loves. By choosing to think about God and spiritual things (his love, grace, mercy, forgiveness, and much more) and to think about the Person of God (his nature and perfections, his works and his redemption), you are, by thinking about God more and more, becoming a person who loves God the most.

No one can give glory to God who does not think of God. No one can live for God if they are not considering what God wants them to do. No one can obey God if they do not think first and frequently about God. Think more about the things of God.

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

Philippians 4:8

Think about what you think about.

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Glory of God, Worship

The heart of man in doing what God desires.

“I delight to do your pleasure, My God. Your law is within my heart.”

Psalm 40:8

How many ways can we disqualify ourselves from being the person we know God is calling us to be? We say things like: “I could obey God better if I just knew more about God. If I understood myself better. If I could deal with sin and get some victory. If I could get over the past. If I could be content. And a thousand other variations on that theme ….” We know that this isn’t faith. It is unbelief and excuse and defeat. These are some difficult, doomed ways of trying to live for God in our own ability. And it never works very well.

Faith is delighting in God. It is knowing God personally and intimately as a Friend. It is loving God with all our heart.

Faith shakes the believer by bringing him to see God’s grandeur and allowing him to be devastated by God’s holiness. Faith is how we become a person who connects with God. By faith we come to understand who God is. It brings us to claim a close relationship with God by which we experience all that God desires for us to know about himself.

Faith, from first to last, is knowing the unseen God. Knowing God is more than finding facts about God. It is knowing who he is, what he is like and knowing what he loves. True faith brings us to a point where we actually know what pleases him the most. This short verse in Psalm 40:8 is a picture of what faith looks like in a true believer.

Look at this language carefully:

“I delight to do your pleasure, My God.” He calls God by the one-word name, Elohâ. This is the name of God, Elohim, added to the personal pronoun “my.” It is simply, “My God.”

Many translations handle that Hebrew word, “My-God” as an oath or a prayer, a cry: “O My God.” But that is making a tender and personal name for God into something it is not.

This line of testimony is a short-course in knowing God. He says directly, personally to God, “I delight to do your pleasure, My God.” He is using the language of prayer and the language of a profound and precious friendship. This is most beautiful.

The Psalmist is telling us how in his life of faith and service he succeeds in “doing” what God delights in. He begins with the deep under-girding of the law of God that has found a home within his heart.

He doesn’t go to the law first. He begins by going to God and on what pleases and delights him. This is the grander and much more effective route to obedience: We love him and then we want to do what pleases him. The life that pleases God comes from a heart that loves God and delights in him. This is how the life of faith sets us free from the condemnation of the law.

The Psalmist tells us that God’s law is not just “written” upon the heart. It is true that that language is used elsewhere and it is a helpful picture of the way in which our lives are transformed by knowledge of the nature of God. It implies that the content on God’s law is read by us and studied seriously, and that is a good thing to do (see Jeremiah 31:33 and Hebrews 10:16). But here what is expressed is not the process of writing the law on the heart, it is what happens after the law is written deeply within your heart. Then you know and do what pleases God.

The law is “within my heart.” Evidence that you understand God and know him, is that you love him and delight in him. “Your law is within my heart” means that you know what God is like and you are aware of what he loves and what he hates. Sin keeps God a million miles away and it makes our language about God impersonal and disconnected from our deepest loves. Saving and sanctifying faith brings us to the place where we can address God as “My God.”

Faith makes our desire and delight to do what pleases God. Faith immerses itself in the Word of God so that the very law of God is in the deepest part of our lives, “Your law is within my heart.” Not just chiseled on the surface like on stone tablets, but internalized to become part of who we are. From the heart we delight in his pleasure because our hearts are becoming a little bit like God’s very heart. “I delight to do your pleasure, My God.”

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definitions of glory

Desperate for Glory

Moses said, “Please, show me your glory.”

Exodus 33:18 

Exodus 33 is the account of God revealing himself to Moses on Mt. Horeb (Sinai). The Law has been given. Moses has seen the splendor of God, veiled, in hidden and shadow form. But after all that splendor and law-giving, now God affirmed his personal knowledge of Moses. God said to Moses, Exodus 33:17, “You have found favor in my eyes, and I know you by name.”

Then Moses replies with a plea, a desperate cry for God’s glory to be revealed to him. The Hebrew is:

“See to me [show me] I beg you [“na“] your glory.”

The word na is to beg, to plead, to crave, to entreat, to pray. Some English translations ignore this wonderful, powerful, important little word.

Moses’ desire for the glory of God is mirrored in Jesus’ High Priestly prayer in John 17:24 — 

“Father, I desire those you gave me to be with me where I am, so that they may behold my glory, that glory you gave me before the creation of the world.”

Jesus was desperate to show his glory to those he came to save. He pleaded with the Father that we might see the glory he had before the world was made.

Intimacy with God must lead us to that point, that place, the opening of a vista, to actually see his glory. We must plead, pray, be desperate in our plea,

“Please, I beg you with all my heart, show me your glory!”

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Worship

Reverence, the fear of God, is essential faith.

“Then they who feared the LORD spoke to one another and the LORD heard and listened to them. He prepared a scroll of remembrance before him of those who fear the LORD and who honor his Name.”

Malachi 3:16

We speak about God differently when we remember he “hears and listens” to us. When we worship him, we worship differently when we remember we are worshiping God as God, not merely coming to God for him to meet our needs, fix our problems, congratulate our goodness, or forgive our failures.

God “hears and listens” and we are changed by him when we worship him. He remembers us who fear him. He never forgets us who revere and glorify his name.

We love to think that God is specially in the building where we are worshiping. He is not. We love to think that our gifts and the sacrifice of time in that hour or two is all he requires of us. That is not what God requires of us. We love the security of letting others take charge of our worship, we believe they are better at it than we are. They are not better at worship; they cannot worship FOR us. We hope the religious officials are speaking for God. They may not be; what they say always needs to be tested by Scripture. 

Worship is coming with people who know and love God, giving him praise, hearing his Word, and recounting what he has done: Praising him, hearing him, remembering  him. It is not entertainment. It is not a school. It is not a religious club. 

Sin keeps the preacher proud (my greatest struggle) and the people at a distance from God. Sin makes the building the sanctuary instead of the sanctuary being wherever God is. Sin makes our moments of worship the exception to our week, not the consummate expression of what we’d been doing every minute, every hour of every day, no matter where we were or what we were doing.

God “hears and listens.” The worshiper delights in God alone. The religious fear (dread) and forget God, or they try to own him. The one who fears the LORD reveres, honors, and praises God and him alone. Nothing else is admitted to his praises. Nothing else is tolerated. It is necessary in this day to state: Only the worship of God is permitted in the worship of God.

God remembers those “who fear the LORD and who honor his name.” 

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Uncategorized

Worship styles versus worship content

The “Music Wars” are raging across the land. Those who love and insist on contemporary worship music and a more relaxed approach are pitted against those who hold with determined, unflinching devotion to the hymns, creeds, and liturgy. The fight is fierce. 

Music Wars describes how churches fight and some of them are destroyed over the battle of what kind of music and how loud is it to be played. But it is not just the style of music that is at the center of this war. Something much more important is at stake:  The Content of Worship and the Way we offer Praise to God are what matter.

Music Wars really boils down to much more than a battle over about musical taste or the casual approach to worship, with un-tucked shirts and jeans versus tradition hymns with coats and ties; dresses not shorts for the ladies, button-down shirts and not tee-shirts for the men.

The issue is not about the kind of music so much as about the content of the music and the quality of the music that is selected. It is not about the casual approach to the worship experience. It is about being focused on the Biblical content of God’s commands for his people in worship. That is where the battle lies.

God-honoring worship could contain any “style” of music, contemporary, country, bluegrass, classical, barbershop, you name it. But that music must be filled with Biblical content. That is what matters. But the music must also be melodic: it must be singable, regardless whether it was written by Chris Tomlin or J. S. Bach.

So much of contemporary music and many of the old hymns are, frankly, vapid. Their content is meaningless or silly, or in some cases, they are unbiblical in content or doctrinally imbalanced. In addition, some contemporary songs and many of the old hymns are either so simple as to be infantile or their melody or rhythm is so complex as to be utterly unsingable.  

Music for worship should meet a few tests if it is to benefit God’s people as we seek to praise and worship God together:

  • Are the words of the songs consistent with the Biblical Gospel? This would be fairly easy to test. Just line up some passages from Scripture that support the aspiration contained in the hymn.
  • Is the music beautiful? Here again the matter should be fairly easy to figure out. Is the music melodic? Does the meter and timing of the song lend itself to congregational singing?

Bad contemporary music and poor hymns fail in the content of the words they use. Or they fail by being too difficult to sing. Some of the old hymns have odd timings and very difficult melodies; contemporary worship often fails when it uses “jazz” style timing and a cadence that is really impossible for a congregation to sing. You can tell whether a song is singable simply by looking around the congregation when the music is being sung. If most of the people are not singing, the music fails the test.

  • Does the music inform, or teach the content and impact of the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Those who have sung the old hymns know that some of those songs are just “bad poetry sung to worse music” (something like a comment that C.S. Lewis quipped after a particularly distressing worship experience in the Church of England). 

A song that is selected must pass the test that it is melodic. A key to this is the ease with which the congregation can learn the song, and the ability that people have to find harmonies within the melody. This test of harmonies is a good one. If the congregation has trouble simply singing the melody and cannot rise to harmonies, there is something missing. 

Worship should be the center of our Christian lives. It should be filled with gloriously beautiful music and these songs should be sung by an engaged and focused congregation that loves the songs and benefits from them. Other parts of the traditional worship experience have been ejected as being irrelevant or arcane to the modern worshiper. But confession of sins, assurance of pardon, even reciting a creed, can all be done with freshness and they can result in the encouragement of the worshipers. Even in a strenuously contemporary service, things can get stale if they are done the same way over and over again. 

Worship is for God, not us. But when God is glorified we are transformed by his presence and by the glory of his Person, his Word, and his Redemption. 

There really is not a “Music War.” There is a content and purpose war that those who love the Word of God and who have been changed by the Gospel desire to win for the Glory of God when his people gather to worship.

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Glory of God, Jesus Christ makes God's glory known

Glory of God — the great work of the Son of God

Some have seen that holiness is “a coordinating relationship between other qualities” within the divine person. In Dutch this is Verhältnissbegriff, the coordination of the divine attributes within the divine person, working together for a common purpose: The glory of God.

Each of the attributes of God coordinates with one another, never competing, limiting, or hindering the ultimate outcome of each individual attribute, but each attribute of God propounding and protecting aspects of the divine person relevant to each, accomplishing together and ultimately all that is within the divine will. Holiness is the means by which this coordination of every divine attribute within the attributes of the divine person is established and expressed.

Wrath and love might be first thought to be competing qualities seeking different ends, just as grace might be viewed as waging war against justice. These qualities are coordinated by means of God’s overarching, holy intention to work all things together for his own glory in everything he does and says (cf. Romans 8:28, “we know that God causes everything to work together for the good …” NLT), satisfying the demands that every quality within the divine person be glorified because they are God’s.

This coordination and purposefulness within the divine person, especially seen in his holiness and glory, is most definitively displayed in the Cross of Christ. No quality within the Godhead is usurped. No aspect of God’s nature is diminished. God is wrathful toward sin and yet he loves his elect people. Certainly the most glorious aspect of the Cross is that every attribute of God is displayed without confusion, competition, or diminution; all are displayed gloriously, yet the redemption of Christ fulfilled God’s intention to save the sinful and to punish sin, thus God honored his own nature as the Holy God while magnificently displaying his love and electing grace. God acted as One to redeem (Deuteronomy 6:4; Mark 12:29).

There is a wondrous singularity in the purpose of God to save. This especially is the display of his holiness. Holiness may be studied as a particular attribute of God, along with God’s other attributes, e.g. wisdom, eternity, goodness, patience, and the like. Holiness also may be studied as a Verhältnissbegriff, by which God coordinates all his qualities and attributes in the accomplishment of his holy will. But it must be said that there is much about these matters that begin to touch the inner economy of the divine person that is necessarily, rightly, protectively, graciously, and forever hidden from our view. Some things within the divine person are unknown to us, not only because God so values our humility as creatures, but much more because he so greatly prizes within himself the glory of his divinity. He has determined that much of this divine economy has been shielded from our knowledge simply because he is God. We should study what we can and love what God has revealed, but the end of this inquiry of the economy within the divine person must be worship, not philosophy.

From More Glory by W. Thomas Warren (2013).

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Uncategorized

The requirement and impossibility of holiness in man, worshiping God.

Man, bereft of his holiness, is also bereft of beauty and excellency. Beauty and excellence are essential qualities of the glory of God. Holiness, therefore, is required of those who rightly give God glory. So if man is to glorify God, his holiness must first be restored. Holiness and glory are causally related to one another: holiness is the interaction, the interplay, the self-consistent expression of those elements of the divine character, balancing and supporting each one (love and justice, mercy and wrath, e.g.); glory is the demonstration of God’s holy character.

God desires to be merciful and redemptive. He is also just and rejecting of every human virtue. Every characteristic of God is bound by his nature to act, with all the power of divinity, in defense of his glory. As we long for the beauty and excellencies of the nature of God—as we desire to abandon our ambitions and hopes so that we may be consumed, lost in those qualities for which we so deeply yearn, from the best parts of our redeemed human souls—we begin to know God.

Our desire as restored man is not merely to observe God’s beauty and wonders; it is to be identified with those excellencies, to know them in a way that knowing is not sufficient to describe. We need more and better words, songs, paintings, deeper friendships, more courageous experiences, higher, grander, clearer insights, if we are to know and love God as we ought. Our tools of speech and human language, our arts and sciences, do not give us the sufficient vocabulary to express what we know of God. The longing we have in our souls about God cannot be contained. Neither does our world seem very substantive to us in comparison to the solidity, the eternity, the profundity of God. Something more real has come to us and now is in us.

So worship is to participate in the holy; it is to know God’s glory face to face; and it is to find our longings and aspirations fulfilled in his presence. Lewis wrote lyrically about this longing, not only to understand but to be joined with God’s glory:

“Ah, but we want so much more—something the books on aesthetics take little notice of. But the poets and the mythologies know all about it. We do not want merely to see beauty, though God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.” (C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, 12–13).

By engaging in a direct quest to know and to extol the virtues and actions of God, we find true and abundant life and a glimpse of the life that is ahead. Then we will see clearly and can say exactly what we mean and we begin to praise God without omission, delusion, or distraction. We are stirred by his gracious invitation to examine his glory without shadow or cloud. All of these realities flow from his loving heart and result in our greatest good forever.

Excerpted from More Glory, W. Thomas Warren (2013).

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