Okay folks, I’m sorry I disappeared for awhile there. I overloaded myself last semester and I had to cut off all my blogging (except for uploading photos to my regular blog via flickr through my phone) and focus on schoolwork. All that to say sorry I was scarce for so long. I’m going to try and post once a week – not sure if I’ll get back to my goal of posting on Mondays and Wednesdays and random Fridays – but hopefully I’ll be back on that this summer.

I have been reading through John Piper’s “Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist” (10th Anniversay expanded edition). It’s really knocking me around – in a good way. The third chapter is on worship and I thought I’d post a few “quotables” from there. If you haven’t ready “Desiring God”, get yourself a copy and read it. Even if you don’t agree with everything he says, you really should at least engage and wrestle with it.

Okay, here are the quotes:

“…worship has to do with real life” (p. 73)

“Worship must engage emotions and thought.” (p. 76)

“Strong affections for God rooted in truth are the bone and marrow of biblical worship.” (p. 76)

“…worship is a way of gladly reflecting back to God the radiance of his worth.” (p. 78)

“[The] reflection of God’s glory in nature is not conscious. The mountains do not willingly worship. In all the earth only humans have this unique capacity.” (pp. 78-79)

In Created for Worship, Noel Due has written an excellent exporation of the Biblical Theology behind worship. I wrote a more general review of the book on my book review blog, but I wanted to highlight the book here because I think it’s one of the finest books written on worship in the last decade or so. I bring it up on this blog because I want to highly recommend it to everyone reading this, whether you’re a worship leader, you desire to be, you’re a pastor, or you’re just a lay person who’s hungry for a little more.

Here’s a little excerpt from the beginning of the book (I tried to include enough to understand what he was talking about, but every concept in the book builds on the ones before it…). check it out:

The anointing of Jesus with the Spirit at his baptism thus identifies him as the covenant king of Israel, who is both the vice-regent of God and the covenantally obligated ruler of God’s people. His mission as the great Davidic King would hinge entirely on his worship of God. Its successful outcome would be a worshiping people, led by his own faithfulness to the throne of his Father. Jesus’ role as the purifier of the Temple (e.g. Joh 2:13-22) and the transformer of worship  (e.g. John 4:19-24) is thus fully fitting for his kingly ministry over Israel and for his construciton of a new Temple, far greater than that of Solomon or Herod. (pp. 11-12)

That may seem like a mouthful, but it is very insightful. The whole book is a Biblical Theological approach to understanding worship and our role in it. Thusly, Due walks through the Bible, pulling out themes and points relevant to worship as he goes along.

I highly recommend this book!