Publisher's Synopsis
Oh not another book on the famed subject of worship! I hear your lament. There are already too many manuals that help to define, teach, and even delineate between the types and categories of praise and worship. Some even come supported by meanings from Hebrew and Greek word exegesis. Many of them have indeed helped to enlighten the Body of Christ on the matter of praise and worship and, hopefully, many a saint would have improved his or her conduct in this area from reading them. However, the limited concern of this book is to expound the bridal as well as the prophetic implications of worship - the kind that enters past His gates into His courts... and helps the saints to experience all that can be found in there. Psalm 22:3 says God inhabits the praises of His people, and I find this very challenging because I've been in far too many congregations where the worship was conducted without the slightest indication that God Himself was supposed to be involved. From scripture and from our daily walk with the Lord, we must find worship to be a journey into the prophetic realm that entrenches us firmly in His present truth purposes. We must aspire, each time we prepare the heart to open the mouth, to actually enter His presence. There, He inhabits the worship and praise, thereby giving it divine life and beauty, and leaving us His revealed glory, and counsel. Our praise and worship flow from the fact of our growing relationship with Him, and as we speak and sing from sanctified adoring hearts, He, in turn, quickens and stirs our hearts with the glory and authority of heaven, to the degree that we start to prophesy His very mind and will. He becomes at once the melody and the harmony, the lyrics and the life thereof. This is the place where every contrary rule and spirit is overthrown and the authority of Christ enthroned. We have been called to sing the song of the Lord with a passion, beauty and power that is all heavenly. Much needed healing and deliverance come as we surrender to the wonder of His splendor revealed in our hearts. The Church must come away from dead rites and seek to move in the fresh ways of the Lord, for He yet proclaims through the prophet Isaiah: Behold, the former things have come to pass, And new things I declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them. Sing unto the Lord a new song, And His praise from the ends of the earth... (Isaiah 42:9-10) A new song is a song emerging out of the current spiritual position of God, and captures any number of spiritual postures or conditions representing that which God is doing in the now. It is this prophetic dynamic that we must seek to emphasize in our worship. Music has always been a spiritual language that easily transcends the mind gate to reach hearts and spirits. It is a veritable tool in God's hands (and Satan's as well), and we in the church must strive to keep it anointed, just the way God planned it. Anointed psalmists and minstrels, now more than ever, have got to take their place out ahead of God's army, as in King Jehoshaphat's day, leading the church in the protocol of stirring up divine presence and power in our worship and praise. In this hour of restoration, we cannot afford to compromise the awesome opportunity of partaking in all that God is willing to share with us as we sincerely seek Him in the places of true praise and worship. This is a prime aspect of the prophetic mandate on us, the church, the bride of Christ, God's priests and kings in the earth. For as Jack Hayford wrote in the worship song Majesty, ...kingdom authority flows from His throne unto His own (as) His anthem (we) raise This book explores how we can best utilize the realms of glory that God would often usher us into when we sincerely worship Him, as is our call. It is my hope that reading it will help you enter the holiest courts of the Lord in order to receive all that's in His heart for you in this hour.
