#worship

I worship impersonal Nature, which is neither "good" or "bad", and who knows neither love nor hatred. ↗

— Savitri Devi

#good #hatred #i #impersonal #knows

The result has been that although few conservative Presbyterian churches actually worship in the Puritan way, the Puritan theology of worship remains the standard orthodoxy among them. This discrepancy sometimes leads to guilty consciences. ↗

— John Frame

#although #among #been #churches #consciences

We must be both more conservative and more liberal than most students of Christian worship: conservative in holding exclusively to God's commands in Scripture as our rule of worship, and liberal in defending the liberty of those who apply those. ↗

— John Frame

#both #christian #commands #conservative #defending

Culture's essential service to a religion is to destroy intellectual idolatry, the recurrent tendency in religion to replace the object of its worship with its present understanding and forms of approach to that object. ↗

— Northrop Frye

#culture #destroy #essential #forms #idolatry

More are the names of God and infinite are the forms through which He may be approached. In whatever name and form you worship Him, through them you will realise Him. ↗

— Ramakrishna

#form #forms #god #him #infinite

Philip Yancey sees our blasé attitude toward the faithfulness of God in the waitstaff At Yellowstone. Even when they are finished their chores, they don't look up and marvel at the geiser going off. After all, they see it so often. ↗

— Philip Yancey

#wonder #worship #attitude

Wonder—the enthusiastic ardor for the sublimity of being, for its worthiness to be an object of knowledge—promises to become the point of departure for genuine insight only where it has reached the stage in which the subject, overwhelmed by the object, has, as it were, fused into a single point or into nothing… like the movement of hope and love toward God, which is genuine and selfless only where it has assumed the attitude of pure worship of God for his own sake. ↗

— Hans Urs von Balthasar

#philosophy #theology #wonder #worship #attitude

[Jesus is] saying that we could be aware of, filled with, and saved by the presence of holy beauty, rather than worship golden calves. ↗

— Anne Lamott

#golden-calves #holy-beauty #jesus #worship #beauty

Worship gatherings are not always spectacular, but they are always supernatural. And if a church looks for or works for the spectacular, she may miss the supernatural. If a person enters a gathering to be wowed with something impressive, with a style that fits him just right, with an order of service and song selection designed just the right way, that person may miss the supernatural presence of God. Worship is supernatural whenever people come hungry to respond, react, and receive from God for who He is and what He has done. A church worshipping as a Creature of the Word doesn't show up to perform or be entertained; she comes desperate and needy, thirsty for grace, receiving from the Lord and the body of Christ, and then gratefully receiving what she needs as she offers her praise-the only proper response to the God who saves us. ↗

— Matt Chandler

#praise-and-worship #sunday-worship #worship #design

No Temple made by mortal human hands can ever compare to the Temple made by the gods themselves. That building of wood and stone that houses us and that many believe conceals the great Secret Temple from prying eyes, somewhere in its heart of hearts, is but a decoy for the masses who need this simple concrete limited thing in their lives. The real Temple is the whole world, and there is nothing as divinely blessed as a blooming growing garden. ↗

— Vera Nazarian

#bloom #blooming #church #deity #faith