Behold and Become
Worship is the primary activity of the believer, yet it is the most misunderstood. Too often, worship is relegated to a few songs at the beginning of a church service. We have treated worship as the warm-up to the sermon and the book ends of church entertainment. God’s word makes it clear; worship is more than a song; it is the relentless pursuit of the lover of our soul.
Our generation will experience the greatest revival history has ever seen, and God-willing, we will experience the return of the Lord. We must align ourselves with the eternal truth that He is only coming back for a pure and spotless bride (See Ephesians 5:27 and Revelation 19:7.)
A pure and spotless bride has doves’ eyes that are for Him and Him alone (Song of Songs 1:15.) To have doves’ eyes is to see God rightly through the revelation that can only come from the Holy Spirit (doves in Scripture represent the Holy Spirit.)
Doves have binocular-like vision with no peripheral sight, and we must resolve to remove the peripheral vision and focus solely on Him. When we behold Him, we become more like Him. This is the worship in Spirit and truth that Jesus talked about.
Furthermore, embedded within the Apostolic prayer found in Ephesians 1, there is this wonderful phrase: “I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope He has given to those He called—His holy people who are His rich and glorious inheritance” (Ephesians 1:18 NLT.)
In the full context of seeing Him rightly, and receiving the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, we see that the process of this coming to pass is through our hearts being flooded with His light. Jesus Himself, in Matthew 6:22 (NKJV), says, “The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light.”
When we fix our gaze upon Him with doves’ eyes, our hearts are flooded with His light. In these moments of beholding, the Holy Spirit pours the radical love of Jesus into our hearts (Romans 5:5.)
Simply put, to worship is to behold and become. While there are many facets of how worship plays out in our day-to-day life, we cannot lose sight that worship is not something you incorporate into your life; it is the reason you have life. You were created to worship.
Careful study of Scripture reveals that worship is demonstrated both in the external expressions of the body and internal postures of the soul. As we pore over God’s Word to see His design for worship, we must remember Isaiah 55:8-9.
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”” (Isaiah 55:8-9 NKJV)
We have tried to put worship in a box to the point where God can no longer recognize it. It is time to allow the Word of God to be our standard and be the foundation of our worship. We must reject the commercialization and industrialization of the uncontainable glory of worship. May we be the ones found relentlessly pursuing Him with all that we are.
