Planning and leading worship services for the church week in and week out can sometimes drain the essence out of worship itself. Worship becomes something I do, an act of professionalism rather than encounter with my heavenly Father. As Presbyterians are known for doing things “decently and in order,” our worship often takes on a rehearsed tone, and “passionate worship” is not how visitors would typically describe the service.
So it is that I came upon the following by A.W. Tozer in his book, The Purpose of Man: Designed to Worship. May this serve as a corrective understanding for all of us as we prepare to enter into worship again.
A Definition of Worship
First, worship is to feel in the heart. I use that word “feel” boldly and without apology. I do not believe that we are to be a feeling-less people. I came into the kingdom of God the old-fashioned way. I believe that I know something of the emotional life that goes with being converted; so I believe in feeling. I do not think we should follow feeling, but I believe that if there is no feeling in our heart, then we are dead. If you woke up in the morning and suddenly had no feeling in your right arm, you would call a doctor. You would dial with your left hand because your right hand was dead. Anything that has no feeling in it, you can be quite sure is dead. Real worship, among other things, is a feeling in the heart.
Worship is to feel in the heart and express in some appropriate manner a humbling but delightful sense of admiring awe. Worship will humble a person as nothing else can. The egotistical, self-important man cannot worship God any more than the arrogant devil can worship God. There must be humility in the heart before there can be worship.
When the Holy Spirit comes and opens heaven until people stand astonished at what they see, and in astonished wonderment confess His uncreated loveliness in the presence of that ancient mystery, then you have worship. If it is not mysterious, there can be no worship; if I can understand God, then I cannot worship God.
I will never get on my knees and say, “Holy, holy, holy” to that which I can figure out. That which I can explain will never overawe me, never fill me with astonishment, wonder or admiration. But in the presence of that most ancient mystery, that unspeakable majesty, which the philosophers have called a mysterium tremendum, which we who are God’s children call “our Father which art in heaven,” I will bow in humble worship. This attitude ought to be present in our church today.
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) was one of the greatest minds that ever lived. When he was only in his teens, he wrote advanced books on mathematics, astonishing people. He became a great philosopher, mathematician and thinker.
One night, he met God, and his whole world was changed. He wrote down his experience on a piece of paper while it was still fresh on his mind. According to his testimony, from 10:30 pm to about 12:30 am, he was overwhelmed by the presence of God. To express what he was experiencing, he wrote one word, “fire.”
Pascal was neither a fanatic nor an ignorant farmer with hayseeds back of his ears. He was a great intellectual. God broke through all that and for two solid hours, he experienced something he could holy characterize as fire.
Following his experience, he prayed; and to keep as a reminder of that experience, he wrote it out: “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and of the learned.” This was not a prayer for somebody who reads his prayers; this was not formal religious ritual. This was the ecstatic utterance of a man who had two wonderful, awesome hours in the presence of God. “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob not of the philosophers and of the learned. God of Jesus Christ… Thy God shall be my God… He is only found by thy ways taught in the Gospel… Righteous Father, the world has not known Thee, but I have known Thee. Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy…” And he put an “Amen” after it, folded it up, put it in his shirt pocket and kept it there.
That man could explain many mysteries in the world, but he was awestruck before the wonder of wonders, even Jesus Christ. His worship flowed out of his encounter with that “fire” and not out of his understanding of who and what God is.
Reveds's Blog 
This was excellent; very inspiring.
Here is some more on Blaise Pascal from my High Plains Drifter blog:
Back in 2002 this guy picked me up while I was hitchhiking through Humboldt, Iowa. A few months later he saw me walking through Estherville, Iowa and showed me Ezekiel 21: 27 (which is very significant to me). He later sent me a letter and told me about Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) and a book written about him by Karen Armstrong. I have read maybe one page of Pascal’s Pensees.
Armstrong writes: “On the night of November 23, 1654, Blaise himself had an experience which lasted ‘from about half-past ten in the evening till about half an hour after midnight’ (November 24) and which showed him that his faith had been too remote and academic. After his death, his ‘Memorial’ of this revelation was found stitched into his doublet:
FIRE
‘God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob’
Not of philosophers and scholars.
Certainty, certainty, heartfelt, joy, peace.
God of Jesus Christ.
God of Jesus Christ.
My God and your God.
‘Thy God shall be my God.’
The world forgotten and everything except God.
He can only be found by the ways taught in the Gospels.
“This was not the God of the philosophers, but the God of revelation.”
Armstrong later writes: “Faith, he insisted was not a rational assent based on common sense. It was a gamble. It was impossible to prove God exists, but equally impossible for reason to disprove His existence . . . This gamble is not entirely irrational, however. To opt for God is a win-win solution. In choosing to believe in God, Pascal continued, the risk is finite, but the gain is infinite. As the Christian progresses in the faith, he or she will become aware of a continuous enlightenment, an awareness of God’s presence that is a sure sign of salvation. It is no good relying on external authority; each Christian is on his own . . . Faith is not intellectual certainty, but a leap into the dark and an experience that brings a moral enlightenment.”
Ezekiel 21: 27: “I will overturn, overturn, overturn, it and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him.”
Genesis 49: 10: “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.”
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A.W. Tozer on Blaise Pascal’s “Fire” from Tozer’s book Whatever Happened To Worship?:
Page 91: “Were these the expressions of a fanatic, an extremist?
“No. Pascal’s mind was one of the greatest. But the living God had broken through and beyond all that was human and intellectual and philosophical. The astonished Pascal could only describe in one word the visitation in his spirit: ‘Fire!’
“Understand that this was not a statement in sentences for others to read. It was the ecstatic utterance of a yielded man during two awesome hours in the presence of his God.
“There was no human engineering or manipulation there. There was only wonder and awe and adoration wrought by the presence of the Holy Spirit of God as Pascal worshiped.
“What we need among us is a genuine visitation of the Spirit. We need a sudden bestowment of the spirit of worship among God’s people.”