I’ve been thinking lately about our corporate gatherings, when we come together and sing, praise…worship. Is what happens on a Sunday morning the culmination of our individual weeks, the overflow of whatever God has been doing? Or is it what prepares us for the coming week as we go and live our lives? This is a 2 part blog about worship, as both the fuel, and the fire in our lives. I want to explore how it both drives us, fills us up, spurs us on, but also is the burning response in our lives, the overflow of the life lived for the glory of God.

Worship – The fire.

Last week we briefly looked at a time when Jehoshaphat, king of Judah chose to worship before he acted. He even went and put the singers in front of the army in battle. We saw that worship is the fuel that drives our lives.

Judah came out on top during that battle. Today I want to briefly look at what happened after…

“Then all the men returned to Jerusalem, with Jehoshaphat leading them, overjoyed that the Lord had given them victory over their enemies.  They marched into Jerusalem to the music of harps, lyres, and trumpets, and they proceeded to the Temple of the Lord.” (2 Chronicles 20:27-28)

Judah went out to battle. God worked, they saw it, and it stirred something in them. They had a natural reaction after all they had seen God do, and that was to worship Him.

On a Sunday, as we come together, we bring all different kinds of lives and weeks in tow. Some  having experienced the heights of exceeding joy, you can see it all over their faces. Some having really struggled, walking through the depths of pain this life includes. Some have had a run of the mill, nothing too out of the ordinary week.

God is in it all. Whether we see Him or not. We must be looking if we are to be aware.

When we come together on a Sunday, we bring all that God has done. We bring lives lived for God. We bring pain, joy, and all ends of human emotions that make up life. When we come together we share in each others’ lives, and we share in the God who has been at work. And the natural result of Christians coming together who’ve seen God at work in so many different ways? An overflow of praise to the God who has revealed Himself in so many different ways.

Worship fuels us for what is ahead, but it is also the response, the reaction to all that God has just done. It is what burns in us when the fuel is God Himself. It’s just natural, it must burn, it can’t be contained.

In acts 4, Peter and John are brought before the Sanhedrin and warned to stop speaking about Jesus, they replied in verse 20 “As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.”

It’s like a fire that can’t be extinguished. When God is the source, when He is the fuel, the supply is never ending. How much of Him we allow to be the source, the fuel, will reflect in how brightly that fire burns, how consumed we are in the flame of our worship in response to Him. And that’s just the point of fire, it is meant to consume.