True Spiritual Worship

This is a point of vast importance and one that every professing Christian should look fairly in the face. Too many are apt to cut the knot of all difficulties about the subject before us by referring to their own feelings.

They will tell us that they are not theologians, that they do not pretend to understand the difference between one school of divinity and another.

But they do know that the worship in which they take part makes them feel so much better, that they cannot doubt it is all right. Some thoughts:

1. True spiritual worship will affect a man's heart and conscience. It will make him feel more keenly the sinfulness of sin, and his own particular personal corruption. It will deepen his humility. It will render him more jealously careful over his inward life. False public wor-ship, like liquor drinking and opium eating, will every year produce weaker impressions. True spiritual worship, like wholesome food, will strengthen him who uses it, and make him grow inwardly every year.

2. True spiritual worship will draw a man into close communion with Jesus Christ Himself. It will lift him far above churches and ordinances and ministers. It will make him hunger and thirst after a sight of the King. The more he sincerely hears and reads and prays and praises the more he will feel that nothing, but Christ Himself will feed the life of his soul and that heart communion with Him is food indeed and drink indeed.

3. True spiritual worship will continually increase the holiness of a man's life. It will make him every year more watchful over tongue and temper and time and behavior in every relation of life. The true worshiper's conscience becomes annually more tender. The false worshipers become annually more seared and more hard.

This is the worship that comes down from heaven and has the stamp and seal and superscription of God.

Adapted from Our Great Redeemer: 365 Days with J. C. Ryle