Following up from the last blog where we talked about the first three elements of the presence of God's glory - praise, humility, and unity - let me continue a little more on unity.
Psalm 133 speaks to unity. This wonderful Psalm (I hope you will read it) suggests that with unity the anointing will flow. We see the oil representing the Spirit of God flowing over Aaron's head. Aaron was the high priest. We believe this to be a reference to Jesus as High Priest and "head" of the church. So the anointing comes from Jesus and runs down over the priesthood (us). Then it flows over the entire body (the Church).
When the entire body comes together in unity, God will do things beyond our imagination. When God pours this kind of anointing upon the Church it doesn't just bless us, it blesses the land we walk on and live in, our nation and our neighbors. The end result is not just power and glory, but "life forever- more." Satan is scared to death of what would happen if we stood together in total unity. Standing together in unity is worship! Without it we can forget seeing the glory of God displayed in the church.
Another element is: a priesthood. There will be no manifestation of the glory of God here on earth apart from His priesthood ministering to God and the world. As we see in Hebrews 4-9, the whole reason for Jesus coming to earth is because man could not provide a priest who was able to serve in purity eternally. Jesus is the chief priest of heaven and is raising up for Himself a priesthood on earth. The royal priesthood of believers must rise up and serve if we want to see God's glory on earth.
So far we have the elements of praise, humility, unity, and a priesthood as prerequisites to real, earth- shaking, glory-manifesting worship. The final element is absolutely essential and stands above all the others - the blood of Jesus. Without His blood we have nothing. The blood releases every heavenly blessing and hastens the glory of God. If we participate in a bloodless worship, the result will be powerless worship. Just as when we approach evangelism without the blood story, we approach without any chance of effectiveness. When we apply the blood to our lives, deep communion with Him takes place. It is the blood of the Lamb that destroys and conquers our enemies. The Glory of God always settles on the blood of Jesus. In Rev. 12: 10-11 we see that if we are to be over-comers in our worship, we must "overcome by the blood of the Lamb".
In conclusion for the last two blogs, if we desire to see the manifest presence of God we have to come together in unity, worshipping and ministering as priests, praising God with humble hearts through the overcoming blood of the Lamb! Hallelujah - let the worship begin! mjm
