quotations about worship
Get a prayer-book in your hand,
And stand betwixt two churchmen.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Richard III
To change lives, our worship must connect with its congregants. God's story must enter into dialogue with our stories, and vice versa. Unfortunately, this is less and less the case. Too much of our worship is sadly out of step with the lives of many, if not most, of our congregants. Unwilling to address life honestly, our worship floats above the fray in irrelevance. Rather than recognize that pain is an important part of contemporary life, we anesthetize our existence. We fail to allow into our worship the dark side.
ROBERT JOHNSTON
"Rated 'R' for Mystery: Worship Lessons Learned from the Movies", Worship That Changes Lives
A life of kindness is the primary meaning of divine worship.
EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine
I can safely say, on the authority of all that is revealed in the Word of God, that any man or woman on this earth who is bored and turned off by worship is not ready for heaven.
A. W. TOZER
Mornings with Tozer: Daily Devotional Readings
Worship is first and foremost for His benefit, not ours, though it is marvelous to discover that in giving Him pleasure, we ourselves enter into what can become our richest and most wholesome experience in life.
GRAHAM KENDRICK
attributed, A Heart of Worship: Experience a Rebirth of Worship
Those who believe that Christians, Muslims, and Jews worship the same god tend to argue that imperfect worship is still a form of veneration. The Trinity may be the true, revealed form of the one deity, but Jews and Muslims, as peoples who trace their religious traditions back to Abraham (all that matters is that they say they do), in fact do pay homage to the same divinity. In short, while Christians have the fullness of revelation, their shared patrimony with Jews and Muslims makes for a special relationship, a love of the same god, something not shared with Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, pagans, and others.
CHASE PADUSNIAK
"Christians, Muslims, and Jews, Oh My!", Patheos, March 30, 2017
One of the lies of the contemporary worship movement is that worship is a homogeneous, exclusive endeavor that targets a specific generation. "Traditional" worship is for older people, "contemporary" is for everyone else. This mindset kills the church, even if the congregation is unaware. A church that prides itself on only featuring old favorites (or current hits) has chosen a toxic path. Call it a sing-along. Call it fellowship. Just don't call it worship. We all must sing.
JONATHAN AIGNER
"8 Reasons Churches Should Sing New Songs", Patheos, February 17, 2016
So many times we stand in the way of really stepping into the secret place of worship with God. Just abandon tradition and the "expected" ways of Praise & Worship and get lost in the holy of holies with the sole intention of blessing the Fathers heart.
JESSICA LEAH SPRINGER
attributed, Made in God's Image to Live for His Glory
It is precisely that requirement of shared worship that has been the principal source of suffering for individual man and the human race since the beginning of history. In their efforts to impose universal worship, men have unsheathed their swords and killed one another. They have invented gods and challenged each other: "Discard your gods and worship mine or I will destroy both your gods and you!"
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
The Brothers Karamazov
So shall they build me altars in their zeal,
Where knaves shall minister, and fools shall kneel:
Where faith may mutter o'er her mystic spell,
Written in blood--and Bigotry may swell
The sail he spreads for Heav'n with blasts from hell!
THOMAS MOORE
Lalla Rookh
To hate man and worship God seems to be the sum of all the creeds.
ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
Some Mistakes of Moses
Oh, the place where I worship
Is the wide open spaces
Filled by the hand of the Lord,
Where the trees of the forest
Are like pipes of an organ
And the breeze plays an amen chord.
AL GOODHART & FLORENCE TARR
"The Place Where I Worship"
It is not he who knows most, nor he who hears most, nor yet he who talks most, but he who exercises grace most, who has most communion with God.
THOMAS BROOKS
attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
An attack on one house of worship is an attack on all houses of worship.
PIERRE ATLAS
"Plainfield mosque vandalized", Kokomo Tribune, February 29, 2016
Divine worship is one of the chiefest jewels of God's crown, which he will by no means part with.
GEORGE SWINNOCK
The Works of George Swinnock
The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Nature
When we find that God's ways always coincide with our own ways, it's time to question who we're really worshipping, God or ourselves.
CRISS JAMI
Killosophy
I don't think God wants to be worshiped. I think the only pure worship of God is by loving one another, and I think all other forms of worship became a substitute for the love that we should show one another.
CHARLES M. SCHULZ
Charles M. Schulz: Conversations
Worship is the community's cult in its purest, most inward, most subjective form--a cult in which objectivity is, as it were, consumed and digested, while the objective content, now stripped of its objectivity, has become a possession of mind and feeling.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
Aesthetics
Nobody wants to worship you if you have the same problems, the same bad breath and messy hair and hangnails, as a regular person. You have to be everything regular people aren't. Where they fail, you have to go all the way. Be what people are too afraid to be. Become whom they admire. People shopping for a messiah want quality. Nobody is going to follow a loser.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Survivor