YOU'RE INVITED!

If you think about it, the organized church is very compartmentalized.  We have separated many things that should never have been separated. It’s as if we have put out a highway to heaven and then said, Please! Everyone! Stay in your lane!  As unintentional as it is, it’s still wrong.  In the process of time, this segregation has created a mind set that there is no other way to operate, even to the point of missing the heart of God.

One area of what God has married, is prayer and worship.  It remains a mystery, seemingly undefinable. But because we are created for it, we are left unsatisfied until we encounter God in the union of the two. Mystery requires us to believe and obey even when we cannot explain.  

The Lord speaks about His Body, the Bride, as a whole.  Yes, He speaks to us individually, but that does not give us permission to separate what God has joined. In the corporate setting especially, worship and prayer is to ebb and flow together.  In the secret place of prayer, we learn to practice the joyful union of the two.  What we have learned in secret we easily flow into when we worship.

Today’s church puts prayer in the closet and worship on stage.  And in most churches the two never meet together.  This is not God’s plan.  I’m not a theologian, but this I know....when I pray, I worship, and when I worship, I pray.  I have no idea where one begins and the other ends.  I find it to be a single lane, the highway to the heart of the Father.  The marriage of the two brings revelation, joy, Godly sorrow flowing from a heart of repentance filled with great hope.  Wisdom comes to meet me there and His Presence overshadows me.  What sweet communion!

It is a heavenly reality we must embrace if we want to encounter God in our earthly existence. One day we will experience heavenly worship full of His Glory.  We will hear heaven singing, worshipping and communing with Him for eternity.  Let us open wide our heart and let the King of Glory come in.  Let us not refuse this wonderful invitation.

I hear the Lord saying, "Come away My Beloved. Sing with Me.  Offer up your prayers of worship.  Give thanks with abandonment.  Talk to Me in the dark hour of the night, in the sanctuary and in the morning sun. Lift your hands and say, I believe!"

Revelation8:3.....another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers (worship) of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne.

Luke 19:46  It is written, My house is the House of Prayer (Worship)

Matthew 19:4-6.....What therefore God has joined together, let not man place room between or separate.  

--Alice Turney

Photo credit: Lynette Crews

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