The Art of True Worship (Pt. 1)
By A. W. Tozer

A. W. (Aiden Wilson) Tozer was born in 1897 in Newburg (then known as La Jose), Pennsylvania, and began pastoring at the Alliance Church in Nutter Fort, West Virginia in 1919. He assumed the editorship of The Alliance Weekly (now The Alliance Witness) in 1950. As a minister in the Christian and Missionary Alliance, his career included ministry at churches in Toledo, Indianapolis, Chicago and Toronto, where he died in 1963.

As a writer, Tozer was gifted in expressing the deepest subjects of the Christian faith with clarity of thought and prophetic insight. His words, written over 50 years ago, still ring true today. His best known works include The Knowledge of the Holy, The Pursuit of God, The Root of the Righteous, I Talk Back to the Devil, Whatever Happened to Worship? That Incredible Christian, and Worship: The Missing Jewel of the Evangelical Church.

We'll run this article in two parts. It hasn't been seen much since being written in 1952. It gives you an awesome sense of the providence of God to see someone who was born in the 19th Century and ministered in the 20th speak so clearly to the current needs and situation of the 21st Century church!


Philosophers have noted the vast difference between men and beasts and have tried to find that difference in one or another distinguishing characteristic. They have said for instance, that man is the thinking animal, or that he is the laughing animal, or that he is the only animal with a conscience. The one mark, however, which forever distinguishes man from all other forms of life on earth is that he is a worshiper; he has a bent toward and a capacity for worship.

Apart from his position as a worshiper of God, man has no sure key to his own being; he is but a higher animal, being born much as any other animal, going through the cycle of his life here on earth and dying at last without knowing what the whole thing is about. If that is all for him, if he has no more reason than the beast for living, then it is an odd thing indeed that he is the only one of the animals that worries about himself, that wonders, that asks questions of the universe. The very fact that he does these things tells the wise man that somewhere there is One to whom he owes allegiance, One before whom he should kneel and do homage.

The Christian revelation tells us that that One is God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, who is to be worshipped in the Spirit in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. That is enough for us. Without trying to reason it out we may proceed from there. All our doubts we meet with faith's affirmation: "O Lord God, thou knowest," an utterance which Samuel Taylor Coleridge declared to be the profoundest in human speech.

In worship several elements may be distinguished, among them love, admiration, wonder and adoration. Though they may not be experienced in that order, a little thought will reveal those elements as being present wherever true worship is found.

LOVE

Both the Old and the New Testament teach that the essence of true worship is the love of God. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." Our Lord declared this to be the sum of the Law and the Prophets.

Now, love is both a principle, and an emotion; it is something both felt and willed. It is capable of almost infinite degrees. Love in the human heart may begin so modestly as to be hardly perceptible and go on to become a raging torrent that sweeps its possessor before it in total helplessness. Something like this must have been the experience of the apostle Paul, for he felt it necessary to explain to his critics that his apparent madness was actually the love of God ravishing his willing heart.

It is quite impossible to worship God without loving Him. Scripture and reason agree to declare this. And God is never satisfied with anything less than all: "all thy heart . . . all thy soul ... all thy might." This may not at first be possible, but deeper experience with God will prepare us for it, and the inward operations of the Holy Spirit will enable us after a while to offer Him such a poured-out fullness of love.

In the love which any intelligent creature feels for God there must always be a measure of mystery. It is even possible that it is almost wholly mystery, and that our attempt to find reasons is merely a rationalizing of a love already mysteriously present in the heart as a result of some secret operation of the Spirit within us, working like a miner, toiling unseen in the depths of the earth. But so far as reasons can be given, they would seem to be two: gratitude and excellence. To love God because He has been good to us is one of the most reasonable things possible. The love which arises from the consideration of His kindness to us is valid and altogether acceptable to Him. It is nevertheless a lower degree of love, being less selfless than that love which springs from an appreciation of what God is in Himself apart from His gifts.

Thus the simple love which arises from gratitude, when expressed in any act or conscious utterance, is undoubtedly worship. But the quality of our worship is stepped up as we move away from the thought of what God has done for us and nearer the thought of the excellence of His holy nature. This leads us to admiration.

ADMIRATION

The dictionary says that to admire is "to regard with wondering esteem accompanied by pleasure and delight; to look at or upon with an elevated feeling of pleasure." According to this definition, God has few admirers among Christians today.

Many are they who are grateful for His goodness in providing salvation. At Thanksgiving time the churches ring with songs of gratitude that "all is safely gathered in." Testimony meetings are mostly devoted to recitations of incidents where someone got into trouble and got out again in answer to prayer. To decry this would be uncharitable and unscriptural, for there is much of the same thing in the Book of Psalms. It is good and, right to render unto God thanksgiving for all His mercies to us. But God's admirers, where are they?

The simple truth is that worship is elementary until it begins to take on the quality of admiration. Just as long as the worshiper is engrossed with himself and his good fortune, he is a babe. We begin to grow up when our worship passes from thanksgiving to admiration. As our hearts rise to God in lofty esteem for that which He is ("I AM THAT I AM"), we begin to share a little of the selfless pleasure which is the portion of the blessed in heaven.

Next: Wonder and Adoration...

Reprinted by permission from Moody Monthly, April 1952. Copyright © 1952 Moody Bible Institute.