Worship Walk: Where Worship and Life Intersect

Copyright © 2013 Gareth J Goossen.

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ISBN: 978-1-4497-8010-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-8011-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-8009-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012923967

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Bruce H. Leafblad, Worship 101: Recovering the Priority of God, Worship Leader Magazine (November/December 1998), 22–25. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Joseph S. Carroll, How to Worship Jesus Christ (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 1991), 24–25. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, Today’s New International Version®. Copyright © 2001, 2005 by Biblica®. Used by permission of Biblica®. All rights reserved worldwide.

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Scripture marked (NCV) are taken from the New Century Version®. Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture marked (NASB) are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Scriptures marked (Phillips) are taken from the J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English, 1962 edition, published by HarperCollins. All rights reserved.

Scriptures marked (KJV) are taken from the King James Version, public domain.

Scriptures marked (GNT) are taken from the Good News Translation® (Today’s English Version, second edition), copyright © 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved.

Scripture marked (MSG) are taken from The Message. Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved.

WestBow Press rev. date: 1/3/2013

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

PART ONE: Getting Started

Introduction

Chapter One: The Essence of Worship

Chapter Two: Worship and Entertainment Are Not Synonymous

Chapter Three: The Cost of Worship

Chapter Four: We’re Using Our Gifts—What More Does God Want?

PART TWO: Walking It Out

Chapter Five: A Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation

Chapter Six: Silence

Chapter Seven: Asking

Chapter Eight: Knowing and Obeying His Prompting

Chapter Nine: Confession

Chapter Ten: Proclaiming

Chapter Eleven: Knowing His Creation

Chapter Twelve: Knowing the Word

Chapter Thirteen: Prayer

Chapter Fourteen: A Passion for His Presence

Chapter Fifteen: Worship That Witnesses

Chapter Sixteen: A Worshipper’s Heart

Chapter Seventeen: Extravagant Worship

Chapter Eighteen: Prophetic Encouragement

Chapter Nineteen: Suffering and Worship

Chapter Twenty: Joyful Giving

PART THREE: Tying Up the Loose Ends

Chapter Twenty-One: Inspiring, Enthusiastic Worship

Chapter Twenty-Two: To Sum It Up

Bibliography

About the Author

For my wife, Gayle

our children: Chris, Dan (and Lisa), Carine

and our grandchildren: Ashton, Ava, Gabriel

Love GOD, your God,

walk in all his ways,

do what he’s commanded,

embrace him,

serve him with everything you are and have.

Joshua 22:5b (MSG)

Paul was all ready to speak,

but before he could utter a word Gallio said …

Acts 18:14a (Phillips)

Foreword

things other people say about the book

Brian Doerksen

At the very heart of worship is our longing to know and love God! Worship Walk helps bring us back to that heart in a compelling way!

I have spent most of my life asking along with the psalmist, When can I go and meet with God? (Psalm 42:2). I believe this is the cry of our hearts because a genuine meeting with him is the only thing that really satisfies. Yet I am amazed at how often we, as worship leaders, seem to think that our job at our weekly gatherings is to excite or entertain God’s people! We need fresh reminders that the main reason people have gathered is a hunger to meet with God. And that meeting with God can be facilitated by more than just music! Gareth has it right when he says people are not mainly coming to church to be entertained (there are better places for that!) but to find God.

Is that what we are offering in our churches? An encounter with the living God? Is that what we are expecting to experience during the rest of our week?

We were created for fellowship with our Creator and it’s only that ongoing encounter that truly renews us! In our lives, when we get tired and overwhelmed, we often turn to entertainment and we are distracted for a time … but not deeply satisfied. But the presence of God that we encounter in genuine worship will satisfy. So this is the goal of each worship gathering—that we would encounter God! And this is the goal of our daily walk with God—that we would encounter God along the journey!

There are many powerful truths covered in this book—I love the way he helps us to remember the truth of the cost of worship. God is more committed to forming his character in us than he is in providing for our comfort. And so worship involves aspects of our whole life. The chapters on confession and silence are fantastic and critical for us to understand how worship is walked out in our lives.

This book is a timely reminder of what worship is all about and how we are to walk it out in our lives.

—Brian Doerksen has always had a passion for intimate worship. Some of his songs which have been sung around the world include Faithful One, Refiner’s Fire, I Lift My Eyes Up, Hungry, You Shine, Today (as for me and my house), Come and Fill Me Up, Come Now Is the Time to Worship, Hope of the Nations, Hallelujah—Your Love Is Amazing, and many others.

He and his wife, Joyce, and their six children live in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada.

Website: http://www.briandoerksen.com

Dr. Peter H. Davids

In 1993, Brian Doerksen sent me an invitation to be the speaker at a conference in Kitchener, Ontario. He was to be the worship leader. That Make Us Holy: Worship and Renewal Conference had been organized by Gareth Goossen, whom I met upon my arrival. I was immediately impressed by his desire for worship to engage all of our lives, not just our times of singing to God, and as a result I have followed his ministry—first in the local church and then in his founding Make Us Holy as a vehicle to take his burden to the wider church—ever since.

When I teach Biblical Expressions of Worship, I have almost nothing to say about music (which has not survived), although I do have more to say about the lyrics (e.g., the Psalms or the songs found in Revelation). The core of worship is found in the terminology, which in both Hebrew and Greek means to bow before—in the sense of submitting to, giving honor to—someone, to be in awe of someone, or to render service to someone. In other words, Christianity is, for us who have come to pledge our allegiance to Jesus, the true Islam (the term Islam means submission). That core attitude works itself out in our service and our singing, and our service in the world is just as much worship as our singing in the gathered congregation. Worship is seen in our praise of God in nature and our care for the environment because our Master made it. It is seen in our engagement for social justice in our country and community, in how we live in our household (living with the sense that Jesus is present there at all times and thus our treatment of our spouses and children is a service and submission to him), and in what we do when gathered with other believers, i.e., in church. That is the message of this book. Gareth has caught the vision and has done a good job of communicating it in a practical and down-to-earth way. Unlike me, he resists any temptation to put you to sleep with discussions of Hebrew and Greek, but instead wakes you up with lively contemporary stories.

Worship depends upon our relationship with Jesus and his Father. Richard Foster includes it as one of the spiritual disciplines. Dallas Willard comments upon it in the same context. Gareth subsumes spiritual disciplines, such as silence, under the topic of worship. This is indeed an appropriate insight. Spirituality is a new catchword of our age, and it certainly should be. Too long our churches have been too happy with outward forms rather than inward reality. But, as Dallas Willard argues (The Spirit of the Disciplines), spiritual discipline serves a greater purpose. Gareth Goossen shows us this greater purpose—it is worship, the giving of ourselves to our Master. And it begins in a heart that is quiet and submitted and thus hears the voice of the Master; that works itself out in actions of service under the guidance of that voice. And that inner submission rises to a crescendo as a group of worshippers gather together and express verbally in song what they have been living day by day the rest of the week. This unity of spirituality, service, and expressive worship is exquisitely caught by Gareth, and hopefully will be caught by those of you who read this book.

I recommend that you do not read this book too fast. Read it one chapter at a time and then meditate on each chapter. Let it sink into your soul. Practice living it out by means of the exercises that he suggests. If you do that, I believe that you will find your life renewed, for you will be entering into the heart of worship, which is really nothing other than entering into the heart of God.

—Peter H. Davids, PhD, and his wife, Judith L. Davids, MCS, have served as missionary educators in Europe providing biblical-theological and counseling services and training to churches and Christian leaders in both the German-speaking world and the surrounding areas of Eastern and Western Europe. Now residing in Stafford (Houston), Texas, Peter continues to work as a self-employed biblical scholar and church consultant with a focus on Europe and Canada.

Peter Davids is known especially for his scholarly treatment of The Epistle of James: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Eerdmans Publishing) and many other scholarly works. He authored More Hard Sayings of the New Testament and coauthored Hard Sayings of the Bible with Walter C. Kaiser and F. F. Bruce for InterVarsity Press.

Website: http://davidsnet.ws/biblical

At all times, and indeed everywhere,

we acknowledge these things with the deepest gratitude.

Acts 24:3 (Phillips)

Acknowledgments

we never walk alone

Many people have banded together to help me in starting and writing this book. My thanks and praise go first to my Lord Jesus Christ who, by his Holy Spirit, continues to lead and guide me and show himself to me in many ways each day. He is the One who continues to teach me to worship walk.

Secondly, my love and thanks go to my wife, Gayle, who through her encouragement and her gifts of storytelling, imagination, and writing skill, has made this book a reality. She often talked through the components of these chapters with me, helping to point me in a direction and then coming alongside to edit what I wrote to better reflect what was in my heart. She worked countless hours editing, adding to, and improving this book in addition to her already full schedule at work.

I also want to thank our three children (all of whom are now adults) for giving up their dad many, many times over the many years of this ministry. They sacrificed time with their dad so others could be encouraged in their walk of worship. I thank them for the ways that they encouraged me to keep writing by sometimes jokingly asking if I was just avoiding writing the book when they saw me fixing something in the house or starting a new project out in the garage. My prayer is that they would also learn to love to walk with Jesus in greater ways than I could ever have attained.

Thanks also go to my mom and dad, Helen and Jake Goossen (my dad passed away in 1998), who constantly loved and encouraged me. And even though they had no idea what this ministry I started in 1994 was all about, they trusted in the One who had called me to do it—and they continually prayed and supported me in it.

Thanks also go to Lila Weber (Abbotsford, BC) who has been my intercessor during the first fifteen years of Make Us Holy ministries. You have often spoken encouragement—and sometimes correction—to me when I needed it most. In spite of a lot of your own personal pain and trials, you never stopped standing in the gap for me. Thank you!

Also, thanks to John Abbott (Dartmouth, NS) who has given himself in intercession for me and this ministry through the years. Your timely words of encouragement have often helped to bring clarity to vision and direction. John, your tenacity to speak from the hip has often been just what was needed to help see clearly what God was doing and asking me to be involved in—through a preponderance of evidence. Thanks, John, for the suggestion of the title Worship Walk.

Also, thanks to my administrative assistants over the years—Susan Baker (to 2007), Hilda Pries (to 2009), and Carlene Hawley (to present)—who helped to look after a lot of the details of seeing the first edition, the Spanish translation, and this revised edition come to completion.

And to the Make Us Holy board of trustees—Marie Fast, Darren McClelland, Matt Peters, Greg Reed—who believed in this revised edition along with the Spanish translation and have encouraged and supported me in these projects the past three years. Thanks also to our past board members—John Cassels, Greg Clarke, Rick DeVrye, Ed Heinrichs, Ron Lugowski, Connie Maier, Hazel Reimer, Robyn Serez, Gary Sharpe, Ryan Snider, Ingrid VanVlymen, Arnie Wohlgemut, Paul Woodburn—who helped get this ministry off the ground and running, laying the foundation of what God has in store for the future.

Then on the more practical side of things, thanks go to Gayle Goossen and Kevin Hawley who freely gave of their expertise and resources of Barefoot Creative to help this book get off the computer and onto the page. Thanks to Gayle for her awesome editing skills and to Kevin Hawley for his design of the cover for this revised edition and Heather Lee who took my photo for the cover.

Many thanks also go to the incredible team at WestBow Press who answered my unending questions, put up with all my pestering, and did an amazing job of the final edit and layout of the book you now hold in your hands. They have made it easy to become a published author!

Many thanks, also, to the people who have helped, through their donations, to cover the costs of publishing this book. And to others who have reviewed the book and lent their comments for the cover and the foreword—thank you!

I am sure that I have missed some people along the way. It is not my intent. Rather, I am so very grateful for the many people who, over the years, have encouraged me through phone call, e-mail, or personal interaction to write these things down in book format. The fruit of those prayers, conversations, and encouragements are what you now hold in your hands.

Walk with God. Worship him always.

To God be the glory!

Gareth J. Goossen

PART ONE:

Getting Started

Happy are those who hear the joyful call to worship,

for they will walk in the light of your presence, LORD.

Psalm 89:15 (NIV)

Introduction

Laying the Foundation

worship

Worship changes who we are as we pursue who God is.

Music has always been a powerful medium to carry to the masses the truth of who God is. It has always been a rich and profound tool to engage the gathered church in expressing corporate praise and worship to God. Music, by its nature, has the ability to engage our hearts—our emotions along with our intellect—in expressing the truth of the relationship between God and humanity, and thereby has found a clear and concise place in our understanding of what it means to gather together to worship God. No church service, anywhere in the world, in any culture or language group is seen as complete without the inclusion of song.

Today, particularly in the North American church, we have focused so much energy on the power of music within our weekly services that we have, inadvertently, begun equating music with worship. Well-meaning, God-honoring men and women engage in bitter battles with their brothers and sisters in the Lord over the best style of expressing worship in song. Believers begin switching churches based on music styles because they have developed a desire to worship in a particular musical fashion. Musical renovation—while not a bad thing to consider in and of itself—has often become the foundation for renewing the church. While we desire and pray for renewal within our churches, we often take our eyes off God and look to music to be that which ignites renewal when, historically, it is renewal that ignites new forms and styles of musical worship.

Music and worship are not synonymous. True worship changes us. When God draws us into his presence, we cannot remain the same. When the image of the invisible God momentarily crosses our senses, we are undone—completely decimated by the wonder of a God who gives us the privilege of an audience.

At the moment we encounter God, trivialities of possession, position, or prominence diminish. We want nothing for ourselves—only what we can give to him. Light, life, and love become centered in harmony with who he is and what he desires. This is a romance which is totally focused on the object of our affection. Self is consumed within our desire to please him. Desire and passion remain unfulfilled without him receiving pleasure from our lips and lives. Our lives are renewed and refreshed as we focus on giving God praise—giving him what he is worthy to receive.

God is the almighty Creator. Creation declares his praise. From the rising of the sun to its setting—all creation praises his name. God proclaims his presence at all times, inviting us to see him, to recognize his imprint everywhere and in everything he has made and continues to cause to exist. As the worshippers’ vision changes, they begin to recognize those imprints and extend praise to God, worshipping him out of the breadth of their lives.

Music, like God’s creation, is a powerful tool to help open us up to worshipping him. Because music engages our emotions, it has the ability to draw us into a sensory experience of understanding and expressing the wonder of who God is. That expression is more than just intellectual assent to what we have come to know to be true. It becomes a deeper interaction between what we know and how we have begun to experience that reality—it impacts our emotional responses to that truth.

Renewal comes from worship. True worship happens when we recognize and respond to the power and love of our God. True worship comes from our gratitude to a Savior who died so that we might live. True worship comes from our hearts poised in reverent humility, understanding that Jesus sent his Spirit to comfort and encourage us, to live in and with us as our guide, helper, and friend.

Worship encompasses all of us—our emotions, our intellects, our relationships, our working lives, our play. Our corporate expression of worship invites renewal when we focus on God—not on style, on format, or on ritual. Our private expression of worship invites personal renewal when we begin to see God interacting with us in our lives, work, and relationships.

For fifteen years we had a family pet—a border collie/blue heeler dog. Many times as I walked our dog in the early morning, the wonder of God’s creation drew me in. Seeing the snail slowly carrying his home with him as he crossed the path, discovering the bush rabbit nibbling on vegetation in the underbrush, or watching a spider spin an incredible mosaic web—all these and more invited my recognition of a powerful creator God. They invited me to extend my praise to him—even through the activity of walking our dog.

It was during those walks with our dog that I began to explore the awesome ways in which God makes his presence known to his creation. God began to teach me to recognize his works, his attributes, his qualities, and his characteristics—inviting my worship in all of life. As he would open up my eyes, thoughts, heart, and mind to the multiplicity of ways in which he involves himself in life, my paradigm of worship began to change. I began to understand that God desired my life to be given in worship to him. He wanted me to walk with him daily and to worship him beyond Sunday morning—beyond the music and the message to the whole of my life.

This book is entitled Worship Walk: Where Worship and Life Intersect. I believe God desires our lives to reflect an intimate, daily relationship with him. In Acts 4:13 the high priest and members of the Jewish council interviewed Peter and John after they had healed the crippled man sitting by the temple. They recognized that they had been with Jesus. The disciples had walked with Jesus daily. He not only taught them the truth of their heavenly Father, he taught them how to live from day to day as they walked alongside him.

Jesus wants to walk with us in the whole of our lives—not just the segments or fragments we set aside for him. As we walk with him each day and invite him to interact with us in our daily duties and tasks—in the exciting and the mundane—he begins to draw us to a kind of worship that isn’t dependent on time, place, or position. It isn’t dependent on music, message, or ritual. He draws us to worship him in the journey of life—to walk with him, interact with him, engage with him, and gain greater understanding of who he is among us and in us, and so reflect more of him to a world that desperately needs to see Jesus.

He invites us to a walk of worship. And it is more than just about music and message.

Many people have encouraged me to write this book. It’s a daunting task—especially when I see the collection of books and articles already written. Part of me sighs and agrees with King Solomon, who writes in Ecclesiastes 12:12: But beyond this, my son, be warned: the writing of many books is endless, and excessive devotion to books is wearying to the body (NASB).

I am writing in obedience to a call of God—a call that is, in essence, the center of Make Us Holy—the ministry I began and have served under since 1994. I desire that men and women, young people and children return to worship with reverence, awe, joy, and enthusiasm. I desire that through prayer, discipleship, and worship Christians may influence their friends, their neighbors, their cities and nations to become worshippers of the true God through his Son, Jesus Christ. I desire that believers everywhere would be given eyes to see the glory of our God interacting with us each day, recognizing his imprint in each activity, and extending their lives as a fragrant offering of praise to him who is holy and worthy of our praise.

I pray that this book will not only encourage your worship of God in corporate, congregational settings (yes, through music and message, too), but even more so, that you would find many opportunities to interact with God as you walk out your worship by living each and every day in his presence—noticing him, speaking with him, seeing him, loving him, living for him.

Welcome to a worship walk … where worship and life intersect!

Write this letter to the angel of the church in Ephesus.

This is the message from the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand,

the one who walks among the seven gold lampstands:

I know all the things you do. I have seen your hard work and your patient endurance.

I know you don’t tolerate evil people.

You have examined the claims of those who say they are apostles but are not.

You have discovered they are liars.

You have patiently suffered for me without quitting.

But I have this complaint against you.

You don’t love me or each other as you did at first!

Look how far you have fallen from your first love!

Turn back to me again and work as you did at first.

If you don’t, I will come and remove your lampstand

from its place among the churches.

Revelation 2:1–5 (NLT)

Chapter One:

The Essence of Worship

a focus on God

For more than sixty years, the