God wants us to worship Him. He doesn’t need us, for He couldn’t be a self-sufficient God and need anything or anybody, but He wants us. When Adam sinned it was not He who cried, “God, where art Thou?” It was God who cried, “Adam, where art thou?”
– A. W. Tozer
Worship
Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness, the nourishment of the mind with His truth, the purifying of the imagination of His beauty, the opening of the heart to His love, the surrender of the will to His purpose.
– William Temple
Worship
To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.
– William Temple
Worship
Begin to rejoice in the Lord, and your bones will flourish like an herb, and your cheeks will glow with the bloom of health and freshness. Worry, fear, distrust, care-all are poisonous! Joy is balm and healing, and if you will but rejoice, God will give power.
– A. B. Simpson
Worship | Healing | Joy
After learning to love God (worship), learning to love others is the second purpose of your life.
– Rick Warren
Worship | Learning
You can see God from anywhere if your mind is set to love and obey Him.
– A. W. Tozer
God | Worship
The highest form of worship is the worship of unselfish Christian service.
– Billy Graham
Worship | Service
We must devote, not only times and places to prayer, but be everywhere in the spirit of devotion; with hearts always set toward heaven, looking up to God in all our actions, and doing everything as His servants; living in the world as in a holy temple of God, and always worshiping Him, though not with our lips, yet with the thankfulness of our hearts, the holiness of our actions and the pious and charitable use of all His gifts.
– William Law
Thankfulness | Worship | Gifts
The foundation of true holiness and true Christian worship is the doctrine of the gospel, what we are to believe. So when Christian doctrine is neglected, forsaken, or corrupted, true holiness and worship will also be neglected, forsaken, and corrupted.
– John Owen
Holiness | Worship | Doctrine
Worship is our innermost being responding with praise for all that God is, through our attitudes, actions, thoughts, and words, based on the truth of God as He has revealed Himself.
– John MacArthur
Worship
It is God who gives us the spirit of worship (Psalm 133:3), and it is what we know of God that produces this spirit of worship. We might say that worship is simply theology, doctrine, what we think about God, going into top gear! Instead of merely thinking about Him, we tell Him, in prayer and praise and song, how great and glorious we believe Him to be!
– Sinclair B. Ferguson
Worship
To be used of God. Is there anything more encouraging, more fulfilling? Perhaps not, but there is something more basic: to meet with God. To linger in His presence, to shut out the noise of the city and, in quietness, give Him the praise He deserves. Before we engage ourselves in His work, let’s meet Him in His Word… in prayer… in worship.
– Chuck Swindoll
Service | Prayer | Worship
Worship is giving God the best that He has given you. Be careful what you do with the best you have. Whenever you get a blessing from God, give it back to Him as a love gift. Take time to meditate before God and offer the blessing back to Him in a deliberate act of worship. If you hoard a thing for yourself, it will turn into spiritual dry rot, as the manna did when it was hoarded. God will never let you hold a spiritual thing for yourself; it has to be given back to Him that He may make it a blessing to others.
– Oswald Chambers
Worship | Blessings | Stewardship
Worship is an inward feeling and outward action that reflects the worth of God.
– John Piper
Worship
To gather with God’s people in united adoration of the Father is as necessary to the Christian life as prayer.
– Martin Luther
Worship | Unity
The true, the genuine worship is when man, through his spirit, attains to friendship and intimacy with God. True and genuine worship is not to come to a certain place; it is not to go through a certain ritual or liturgy; it is not even to bring certain gifts. True worship is when the spirit, the immortal and invisible part of man, speaks to and meets with God, who is immortal and invisible.
– William Barclay
Worship
Forms and rituals do not produce worship, nor does the disuse of forms and rituals. We can use all the right techniques and methods, we can have the best possible liturgy, but we have not worshipped the Lord until Spirit touches spirit.
– Richard J. Foster
Worship | The Holy Spirit
So many today are worshiping in the mountains, big churches, stone and frame buildings. But Jesus teaches that salvation is not in these stone structures–not in the mountains–not in the hills, but in God.
– William J. Seymour
Worship
The best, most beautiful, and most perfect way that we have of expressing a sweet concord of mind to each other is by music.
– Jonathan Edwards
Worship | Music | Beauty
God must speak to us before we have any liberty to speak to him. He must disclose to us who he is before we can offer him what we are in acceptable worship. The worship of God is always a response to the Word of God. Scripture wonderfully directs and enriches our worship.
– John Stott
Worship | Prayer | Liberty
Without the heart it is not worship; it is a stage play; an acting a part without being that person really a hypocrite. We may truly be said to worship God-though we lack perfection; but we cannot be said to worship Him if we lack sincerity.
– Stephen Charnock
The Heart | Worship | Hypocrisy
If we haven’t learned to be worshippers it doesn’t really matter how well we do anything else. Worship changes us or it has not been worship. To stand before the Holy One of eternity is to change. Worship begins in holy expectancy, it ends in holy obedience.
– Erwin Lutzer
Worship
Fruitful and acceptable worship begins before it begins.
– Alexander MacLaren
Worship
A true love of God must begin with a delight in his holiness.
– Jonathan Edwards
Worship
Worship is a believer’s response to God’s revelation of Himself. It is expressing wonder, awe, and gratitude for the worthiness, the greatness, and the goodness of our Lord. It is the appropriate response to God’s person, His provision, His power, His promises, and His plan.
– Nancy Leigh DeMoss
Worship
Saints are described as fearing the name of God; they are reverent worshippers; they stand in awe of the Lord’s authority; they are afraid of offending Him; they feel their own nothingness in the sight of the Infinite One.
– Charles Spurgeon
Worship
I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Worship | Love
For the Christian, worship is co-extensive with life. Life is already an expression of worship.
– Ravi Zacharias
Worship | Life
We’re here to be worshippers first and workers only second. We take a convert and immediately make a worker out of him. God never meant it to be so. God meant that a convert should learn to be a worshiper, and after that he can learn to be a worker…The work done by a worshiper will have eternity in it.
– A. W. Tozer
Worship | Service
I believe that in public worship we should do well to be bound by no human rules, and constrained by no stereotyped order.
– Charles Spurgeon
Worship
Word and worship belong indissolubly to each other. All worship is an intelligent and loving response to the revelation of God, because it is the adoration of His name. Therefore, acceptable worship is impossible without preaching. For preaching is making known the name of the Lord, and worship is praising the name of the Lord made known.
– John Stott
Worship | Preaching
Worship is not a repetitious exercise of rituals and formulas. These create a veil that actually prevents us from enjoying the presence of the Lord. Worship is the heart poured out in gratitude and awe, expressing our appreciation of who He is and what He has done for us by His grace through Jesus Christ.
– Dave Hunt
Worship | The Heart
Worship is not an external activity precipitated by the right environment. To worship in spirit is to draw near to God with an undivided heart. We must come in full agreement without hiding anything or disregarding His will.
– Erwin Lutzer
Worship
Those who invest more into a relationship with Jesus will have a greater sense of rejoicing in Him.
– Crystal McDowell
Praise | Worship
Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than find as quickly as possible someone to worship.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
Worship | Freedom
The weekly worship service can be very effective in evangelism of non-Christians and in edification of Christians if it does not aim at either alone but is Gospel centered and in the vernacular.
– Tim Keller
Evangelism | Worship
Two sentiments alone suffice for man, were he to live the age of the rocks – love, and the contemplation of the Deity.
– Isaac Watts
Love | Worship
All Christian power springs from communion with God and from the indwelling of divine grace.
– James H. Aughey
Grace | Worship | Power
Where God is at the center of things, worship inevitably follows. Where there is no spirit of worship, there God has been dethroned and displaced.
– Sinclair B. Ferguson
Worship
The simplest way to define worship is that it is to attribute worth to God’s revealed character. The command to “ascribe to the Lord the glory due to His name” in Psalm 29:2 does not mean we add anything to God. It simply means that we acknowledge Him for who He is and in this way glorify or honor Him. This is precisely what is being done in heaven (Revelation 4:11, 5:12).
– William Thrasher
Worship
I drove away from my mind everything capable of spoiling the sense of the presence of God…. I just make it my business to persevere in His holy presence… My soul has had an habitual, silent, secret conversation with God.
– Brother Lawrence
Prayer | Worship
Worship is our response to the overtures of love from the heart of the Father. Its central reality is found ‘in spirit and truth.’ It is kindled within us only when the Spirit of God touches our human spirit.
– Richard J. Foster
Worship
Regardless of the reaction of others, one thing is certain: True worship and devotion will make our lives fragrant and will perfume the environment around us. Our homes, our churches, even our places of work will bear the sweet scent of our devotion. Most important, the Lord Jesus will be pleased. And ultimately that is all that really matters.
– Nancy Leigh DeMoss
Worship
I wonder if there was ever a time when true spiritual worship was at a lower ebb. To great sections of the church, the art of worship has been lost entirely, and in its place has come that strange and foreign thing called the “program.” This word has been borrowed from the stage and applied with sad wisdom to the public service which now passes for worship among us.
– A. W. Tozer
Worship
When we worship God as we ought that’s when the nations listen.
– Edmund Clowney
Worship
When it comes to satisfying our spiritual appetites, there is no such thing as excess. There are no restraints placed on us by God. There are no rules of temperance or laws requiring moderation or boundaries beyond which we cannot go in seeking to enjoy Him. We need never pause to inquire whether we’ve crossed a line or become overindulgent. You need never fear feeling too good about God.
– Sam Storms
Worship
There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, He wants me as His friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given His Son to die for me in order to realize this purpose. not merely that we know God, but that He knows us.
– J.I. Packer
Salvation | Worship
Worship is the specific act of ascribing to God the glory, majesty, honor, and worthiness which are His.
– Jerry Bridges
Worship
People who do not worship are swept into a vast restlessness, epidemic in the world, with no steady direction and no sustaining purpose.
– Edmund Clowney
Worship
Real worship is that of the heart.
– Harry Ironside
Worship | The Heart
It is in the process of being worshipped that God communicates His presence to men.
– C.S. Lewis
Worship
When we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity. We exult in its very invisibility.
– G.K. Chesterton
Worship
Do not always scrupulously confine yourself to certain rules, or particular forms of devotion, but act with a general confidence in GOD, with love and humility.
– Brother Lawrence
Worship
Lawful worship consists in obedience alone.
– John Calvin
Worship | Obedience
To worship God in truth is further to admit that we are entirely contrary to Him, and that He is willing to make us like Himself if we desire it. Who will be so imprudent as to turn himself away, even for a moment, from the reverence, love, service and continual adoration which we most justly owe Him?
– Brother Lawrence
Worship
There is a difference between going to a service “for the worship” and going to a service “to worship the Lord.” The distinction appears to be a minor one, but it may imply the difference between the worship of God and the worship of music!
– Sinclair B. Ferguson
Worship
O what a blessing is Sunday, interposed between the waves of worldly business like the divine path of the Israelites through the sea! There is nothing in which I would advise you to be more strictly conscientious than in keeping the Sabbath day holy. I can truly declare that to me the Sabbath has been invaluable.
– William Wilberforce
Worship
Lord, who art always the same, give that I know myself, give that I know Thee.
– Augustine
Worship
Worship is first and foremost a feasting on all that God is for us in Jesus… [One] in which God is the host, the cook, the waiter, and the meal itself.
– Sam Storms
Worship
It is one thing for the living water to descend from Christ into the heart, and another thing how–when it has descended–it moves the heart to worship. All power of worship in the soul, is the result of the waters flowing into it, and their flowing back again to God.
– G.V. Wigram
Worship
We are never nearer Christ than when we find ourselves lost in a holy amazement at His unspeakable love.
– John Owen
Worship
When one thinks of the wondrous glory of Christ, how astonishing that He can join with us! But more, when one thinks of His bringing many sons to glory at such a cost, one is lost in adoring amazement.
– G.V. Wigram
Worship
In order to know God, we must often think of Him; and when we come to love Him, we shall then also think of Him often, for our heart will be with our treasure.
– Brother Lawrence
God | Worship
There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God.
– Brother Lawrence
Worship | Prayer
To worship God in truth is to recognize Him for being who He is, and to recognize ourselves for what we are.
– Brother Lawrence
Worship
If your heart takes more pleasure in reading novels, or watching TV, or going to the movies, or talking to friends, rather than just sitting alone with God and embracing Him, sharing His cares and His burdens, weeping and rejoicing with Him, then how are you going to handle forever and ever in His presence? You’d be bored to tears in heaven, if you’re not ecstatic about God now!
– Assorted Authors
Worship | Heaven | The Heart
Let family worship be short, savory, simple, plain, tender, heavenly.
– Richard Cecil
Worship
In worship an increased power steals its way into the heart sanctuary, an increased compassion grows in the soul. To worship is to change.
– Richard J. Foster
Worship | Change
Nothing makes God more supreme and more central in worship than when a people are utterly persuaded that nothing – not money or prestige or leisure or family or job or health or sports or toys or friends – nothing is going to bring satisfaction to their sinful, guilty, aching hearts besides God.
– John Piper
Worship | Contentment
God directs his people not simply to worship but to sing his praises ‘before the nations.’ We are called not simply to communicate the Gospel to nonbelievers; we must also intentionally celebrate the Gospel before them.
– Tim Keller
Evangelism | Worship
Should I worship Him from fear of hell, may I be cast into it. Should I serve Him from desire of gaining heaven, may He keep me out. But should I worship Him from love alone, He reveals Himself to me, that my whole heart may be filled with His love and presence.
– Sadhu Sundar Singh
Worship
Fruitful and acceptable worship begins before it begins.
– Alexander MacLaren
Worship
Above all sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing him more than yourself, or any other creature. In order to do this attend strictly to the sense of what you sing, and see that your heart is not carried away with the sound, but offered to God continually; so shall your singing be such as the Lord will approve here, and reward you when he cometh in the clouds of heaven.
– John Wesley
Worship | Rewards
Worship is adoring contemplation of God.
– R.A. Torrey
Worship
I can safely say, on the authority of all that is revealed in the Word of God, that any man or woman on this earth who is bored and turned off by worship is not ready for heaven.
– A. W. Tozer
Worship | Heaven
Strong affections for God, rooted in and shaped by the truth of Scripture – this is the bone and marrow of biblical worship.
– John Piper
Worship
The best worship that we ever render to God is far from perfect. Our praises, how faint and feeble they are! Our prayers, how wandering, how wavering they are! When we get nearest to God, how far off we are! When we are most like Him, how greatly unlike Him we are!
– Charles Spurgeon
Worship
A little lifting of the heart suffices; a little remembrance of God, one act of inward worship are prayers which, however short, are nevertheless acceptable to God.
– Brother Lawrence
Prayer | Worship | The Heart
Of all the things Christ wants for us, loving Him and focusing our attention on Him are the most important.
– Charles Stanley
Worship
For all of us involved in preaching the gospel, performing music, publishing Christian materials, and all the rest, there is an uncomfortable message here: Jesus is not terribly impressed with religious commercialism
– Jim Cymbala
Preaching | Worship
Worship is simply glorifying God; this means there is nothing required of us that cannot be done as an act of worship.
– John MacArthur
Worship
Adoration is the spontaneous yearning of the heart to worship, honor, magnify, and bless God. We ask nothing but to cherish him. We seek nothing but his exaltation. We focus on nothing but his goodness.
– Richard J. Foster
Worship
God as we ought to worship Him. God is Spirit, so we must worship Him in spirit and truth, that is, by a humble and true adoration of spirit in the depth and centre of our souls.
– Brother Lawrence
Worship
Worship is a meeting at the centre so that our lives are centered in God and not lived eccentrically. We worship so that we live in response to and from this centre, the living God. Failure to worship consigns us to a life of spasms and jerks, at the mercy of every advertisement, every seduction, every siren. Without worship we live manipulated and manipulating lives. We move in either frightened panic or deluded lethargy as we are, in turn, alarmed by specters and soothed by placebos. If there is no centre, there is no circumference.
– Edmund Clowney
Worship
We may be truly said to worship God, though we lack perfection; but we cannot be said to worship Him if we lack sincerity.
– Stephen Charnock
Worship
GOD will not permit that a soul which desires to be devoted entirely to Him should take other pleasures than with Him: that is more than reasonable.
– Brother Lawrence
Worship
For worship is, essentially, the reverse of sin. Sin began (and begins) when we succumb to the temptation, “You shall be as gods.” We make ourselves the center of the universe and dethrone God. By contrast, worship is giving God his true worth; it is acknowledging Him to be the Lord of all things, and the Lord of everything in our lives. He is, indeed, the Most High God!
– Sinclair B. Ferguson
Worship | Sin
The end we ought to propose to ourselves is to become, in this life, the most perfect worshippers of God we can possibly be, as we hope to be through all eternity.
– Brother Lawrence
Worship
We need to discover all over again that worship is natural to the Christian, as it was to the godly Israelites who wrote the psalms, and that the habit of celebrating the greatness and graciousness of God yields an endless flow of thankfulness, joy, and zeal.
– J.I. Packer
Worship | Joy | Thankfulness
An unschooled man who knows how to meditate upon the Lord has learned far more than the man with the highest education who does not know how to meditate.
– Charles Stanley
Worship | Meditation
For the love which God bears to the soul, His eternal, never-ceasing desire to enter into it, and to dwell in it, stays no longer than till the door of the heart opens for Him. For nothing does, or can keep God out of the soul, or hinder His holy union with it, but the desire of the heart turned from Him.
– William Law
Worship
A little lifting of the heart suffices; a little remembrance of God, one act of inward worship are prayers which, however short, are nevertheless acceptable to God.
– Assorted Authors
Prayer | Worship