Public Worship - Private Worship

When I first began leading worship years ago, I was challenged with a hard question at a worship conference that has always stuck with me and even challenged me just yesterday to ask the question of my own flock of worshippers. The question went something like this. "How is your private worship?"

I remember thinking, "Woe wee, wait a minute, what does that mean, exactly?" Well it simply means "You will never take a congregation publicly where you have not gone privately." and for those worshippers in the congregation it simply means "you can never go publicly where you have not gone privately."

What a great, humbling teaching moment for me. Public worship is intended to be a time for the church (body of worshippers) to come together and encourage one another, lifting up the name of the Lord and honoring Him in one accord, after all this is what we were created for.

Our public worship times as the Body of Christ should be an overflow of our private encounters with God. Can you imagine how great our Sunday worship times would be if we were worshipping privately all week long? We would explode when we came together. Instead, sadly, often times I find myself begging people to sing, to lift their hands to clap and to praise - not me, not the band, not the music, not the song - but Praise to the KING. Authentic public worship is an overflow of our private time with God. Let me say that again "authentic public worship is an overflow of our private time with God."

How can we sing about His love replacing loneliness or His truth replacing lies, or about forgiveness and being forgiven, if we have never experienced it personally and privately? How can we expect to worship corporately if we do not treasure Him and His words privately?

I love what our pastor said just a week ago if you are not participating you are not worshipping. You see my friends true worship is an expression (action word) and how can we express our love for the King if we do nothing.

One final note - Picture This!
A child runs up to you and lifts his/her hands to be picked up to be loved on think about how that makes you feel inside - how much more do you think the King of kings feels when we lift our hands to Him - saying I just want to love on You.

Til another time - make the time to love on Jesus this week privately so when Sunday rolls around it will be really easy to love on Jesus publicly....