Defining worship....

I was over at worshipmatters.com this evening and was reading through some very encouraging and insightful articles Bob Kauflin wrote about worship, as I'm in the process of writing an essay for English on the subject.

I was reading through his one post called Defining Worship in which he, oddly enough, defines worship. He does this by quoting several other people on the subject, and there was one that stood out to me as so astonishingly simple, yet so powerful and true! It was written by William Temple (1881-1944) in "Readings in St. John's Gospel." There are so many debates on the subject of worship in the church that it's always refreshing to be reminded about what it's really all about.

He says:

"Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His Beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose – and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin”.

-William Temple