Each month I will highlight worship truths from the Word of God including the views of various worship authors/ministers and highlight basic principles of worship which hopefully will enrich your own worship experiences and serve to empower your own personal devotion to the Lord. This fall, I will be high-lighting the names of God. The reason I have chosen this topic is because "worship begins with God"! Worship is a response of all that we are to all that God is and has done in our lives and throughout the history of man. In corporate worship, we gather to rejoice, remember, and respond to the Father's free gift of grace, pardon, and redemption through his Son Jesus Christ. This is at the heart of Christian worship, and as such, worship becomes a response to the revelation of who God is. In order to better understand the "how and why" of worship, we need to understand "Who" we worship so we can adequately respond to His revelation with both our hearts and with the full understanding of our minds. Worship is not meant to be strictly an emotional experience, but also a cognitive and spiritual experience.
The prophet Hosea declares that it is for lack of knowledge that God's people often perish. In order to worship in spirit and in truth, we need to more fully "understand" the truth about God so we can truthfully respond to the revelation of himself. This presents one of the greatest challenges to the church today. Often times, we worship ignorantly or without knowledge of why, how, or who we worship. As a result, our worship takes on a mundane, boring, ritualistic, or religious feel of just going through the motions because no one really understands the significance or importance of the worship event which is tied to history. So, who is this God we worship anyway? The Apostle Paul said, "Oh, that I may 'know' Him!", but how can we really know someone personally if we don't even know their name. The God we worship goes by many names because no one name can fully disclose the fullness and majesty of who God really is. So, each week we will take a look at a different name for God which helps to reveal more clearly who He is to us so that we may worship Him more perfectly and so that we may come to know Him better.
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