"So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty: for He is thy Lord; and worship thou Him." (Psalm 45:11) When we discover the heart of man's nature we realize that God's natural dwelling place is our souls. True worship is internal as opposed to external. We tend to try to make it something external. We don't need any machinery to worship God. We can worship Him in spirit and in truth through the depths of our own hearts as the angels in glory can worship Him. We don't have to have anything.
The soul is a God-shaped void. In fact, it is like a God-shaped garment. Let's say like a glove shaped to fit your hand. The problem is that God can not enter because of all the junk we have in the glove. The glove has to be empty before God can possibly enter. The first thing in seeking the Lord in personal worship is the emptying of ourselves of all the rubbish we have accumulated in our lives. He will then come in and clothe Himself with us. We need to search our hearts for moral rubbish, intellectual rubbish, rubbish of habits, of custom; things we do and do not do, think or do not think. We have to empty it all before the Lord. It is not some new thing, it is the simple emptying of self so that He can come in and fill the void.
But once we have emptied ourselves of everything, then we need to be cleansed in order for God to enter. We can only be cleansed through the blood of the Lamb. An emptied and cleansed soul before the Lord becomes God's most natural dwelling place. We do the work of emptying; but He has to do the work of cleansing. He makes us clean in the blood of the Lamb. We are the Holy Spirit's natural habitat. He makes Himself at home, speaking and living through us.
How can that be? Because God made our souls in the image of God and He can dwell in His own image without any embarrassment. He wants to indwell our soul, not weekending, not as a houseguest, but permanent residence. Only sin can prevent the natural habitat of Him. Worship and sin are incompatible. Sin prevents worship. We can not worship with unconfessed sin in our lives.
Miss Bertha Smith, a long time missionary, used to greet every believer and say, "Are you confessed up to date?". If we want to worship; we must be "confessed up to date". mjm
