The Priority of Worship

Last blog ended with:  God is the first priority of the church, therefore, worship should be the priority of the church.  There was a book called The Tyranny of the Urgent that pointed out how we allow the urgent to overcome the important in our lives.  If our life perspective is horizontal, our obsession with that which is human -  achievement, logic, opinion, and results - takes up all of our time and focus.  However, if our perspective is vertical, the things of God become our focus.
Gordon Dahl said, "Most middle-class Americans tend to worship their work, to work at their play, and to play at their worship.  As a result their meanings and values are distorted.  Their relationships disintegrate faster than they can keep them in repair, and their lifestyles resemble a cast of characters in search of a plot."  Even when the church gathers for worship every week this is obvious in so many folks, that their focus seems to be horizontal rather than vertical.
In his new book Chuck Swindoll says, "When we substitute the urgent for the important in the church of Jesus Christ, we emphasize work, activity, involvement, doing, producing, impressing, and accomplishing.  But it leaves us feeling flat and empty.  It smacks of the secularized world in which we work.  Who knows how many people have been turned away from Christianity, longing for the true, living God but encountering at the church a secularized substitute?"  It's bad enough that because of the lack in our worship life, people don't encounter God in our witness.  But, even sadder that some come into the church and because of the church's focus fail to encounter the living, loving God because the people of God are not focused on His manifest presence in worship.
Swindoll says, "The important rather than the urgent things highlight the things of God - God's Word, God's will, God's plan, God's people, God's way, God's reason for living, God's glory, and God's honor.  And the goal of all of these? God's worship.  The underlying objective of a church committed to the important things - rather than the urgent - is the cultivation of a body of worshipers whose sole focus is on the Lord our God."
Lord, teach us how to make worship priority in our lives and in our church, with a passion for your presence among us!  mjm