Patterns Of Song

When Daniel realized that a written decree had been issued, he entered his home, where the windows in his upper room opened toward Jerusalem. Three times daily he was kneeling and offering prayers and thanks to his God just as he had been accustomed to do previously. Daniel 6:10 NET

Why not build into our lives unhurried quiet, where, among other disciplines, we pause to consider the radiance of who Jesus Christ actually is. God. And praise Him unreservedly, raw, wide open to our innermost thoughts. Allow Holy Spirit to sing with us, ask Him to pour out our anguish, our happiness, our grief, our forgiveness. 

Because even though we cannot see it or touch it, heaven is as real and vital to us in our worship as oxygen is to our lungs. In fact, worship is a kind of spiritual respirator. 

We breathe air into our lungs that we cannot see — and we live. In the same way, as we worship we breathe heaven into our souls — and we live, filling our hearts with the unseen, life-giving atmosphere of heaven.

Faith convinces us that we are in the realm of heaven as we worship, and it encourages us to breathe deeply, that we might become more fully alive. 

Thus, worship offers praise, commits our faith, (Hebrews 11:1 NET Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, being convinced of what we do not see). 

How does worship make us come alive? How does it wake us up? worship awakens us to the past, to the generations who have gone before us in the faith, who are now the assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven. 

As we become aware that this great cloud of witnesses are actually fellow worshippers with us, we gain a new sense of the continuity of God’s kingdom across the ages!  He is all that is, all that was, all that will be!

We rejoice in the knowledge that Christ truly is the mercy of God to a thousand generations of those who love Him. Our joy is enhanced as we read the same Scriptures and partake of the same Supper as generations before us did, as we sing songs of praise and the same hymns and as they did we follow the same patterns in worship they did.