Encountering The Spirit In Worship
When I was growing up, my family was very involved in the expression of faith known as Pentecostalism, the Hispanic Assemblies of God to be exact. For as long as I could remember, my church experience was filled with an emphasis on evangelism, communal activities, and charismatic worship services. While I haven’t worshipped in this context for several years now, I have appreciated the tradition I was raised in for many reasons, but one of the most significant reasons being that it taught me the value of corporate worship. As I continued to grow in my faith, this understanding always stuck with me. Spending time in corporate worship is essential to the life of a Christian for many reasons. Furthermore, what I came to realize is that I encountered the work of the Holy Spirit in unique ways when I participated in a worship service, in meaningful and incomparable ways.
When we gather together to worship on a Sunday, I believe two things are going on in our midst. One is that we come to individually worship God and the Holy Spirit does work in us as we praise our King. When we come to sing our praises, spend time in prayer, and hear the Word faithfully preached, there is a transformation occurring in our hearts and minds. We become transformed into the image of Christ as we repeat songs that proclaim things that are true about Him and hear the gospel preached. In these moments that we participate in weekly, the Holy Spirit does work in ourselves. We grow deeper in our faith by being fed in this way, along with practicing worship and prayer as a spiritual discipline on our own.
The Spirit and The Body
But when we gather to worship corporately, the Spirit also does work among His people as a corporate body. When we receive the Lord’s Supper together, stand to recite scripture as the body of Christ, and sing together during musical worship, I believe that it is also a means for the Holy Spirit to work. Because in those moments we are reminded that the Christian faith extends beyond ourselves and we can find comfort in the fact that the Church stretches throughout time and space. We become united to one another through the bread and the cup as God’s people. This offers us the opportunity to find community, accountability, and when needed, reconciliation among many other things. The Holy Spirit binds us together as we gather, and this gives us a deeper sense of our faith and the work of Jesus within His church. I would also venture to say that in the life of a Christian, gathering to worship can allow us to reconnect and refresh our faith. Because when we find ourselves in seasons of weariness, we can join the saints in declaring things about God that are true and good, which serves as a reminder that the Holy Spirit is near. I know in my own life that there have been times where I didn’t “feel” like worshipping, but desperately needed to because in those moments, I felt the Spirit draw near to me as the Comforter He’s promised to be.
But this idea that the Holy Spirit does work in us as we worship God isn’t new. Turning to our bibles, we can see that the apostle Paul has a lot to say about worship and the Holy Spirit. An example of this comes from Ephesians 5:18-20, which says:
“Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” NIV
What Paul is getting at here is that the Holy Spirit offers us immeasurable joy, comfort and actively binds us together in His presence through the act of corporate worship. Whether we are singing songs of praise, partaking in communion together, or spending time in confession and repentance of sin, the Spirit is active in our worship services in ways that we don’t necessarily experience in our individual encounters with God. There is something unique about God’s people gathering to worship and seek His presence together.
Private and Public Worship
Now, does this mean that we should only worship when gathered on a Sunday morning? Certainly, not. I think its essential to the life of a Christian to inhabit a life of worship, as a living sacrifice to God (Romans 12:1). A life of service to the Lord and His people honors him and allows us to cultivate a life spent worshipping Him at all times. I would also say that it’s equally important to come to the house of the Lord with clean hearts, prepared to worship by having already strived for holiness before stepping foot through church doors. And if we’ve failed (which I guarantee we have), then we’d best spend time in prayer, confessing and repenting of sin so that the posture of our hearts are toward the God we intend to worship.
Granted, some events can occur on local, national, and even global levels that interfere with our abilities to gather as a church (see the current COVID-19 pandemic), for which we need to use wisdom to make adjustments. But even as we continue to navigate the choppy waters of learning to worship together amid a pandemic through digital means or precautionary means, I hope that we long for the day that we can gather once more to worship. And may we pray for the day that the Church can worship God in Spirit and in Truth, looking forward to the work of the Holy Spirit both in our hearts and in our congregations.