What precedes worship that really touches the heart of God and releases a process of transformation in our lives?  After all, becoming Christ-like is not necessarily the highest priority for most Christians.  There is a settledness into a comfort zone that, even for those who attend the more radical and cutting-edge fellowships, some seem to display in their lives.  And the moving dynamic of the Holy Spirit seems only temporary, perhaps because the “presence and power” is used by some in a dysfunctional way.  Think about it. Those with addictive personalities almost seem to treat the Presence of God as if He were a co-dependent—there to make them feel better and medicate their inner pain the way the drugs, alcohol and sex did before they became Christians.  It was that way for me for a while in my early Christian life.

And worship services become enablers, encouraging them to continue their addictive and enslaving ways--until God reveals Himself as something other than a “warm and cuddly,” and begins to dismantle their dependence upon “spiritual medication.”  The sense of His presence disappears, problems intensify, friends depart, illness comes, and spiritual markers which at one time gave a sense of personal Christian identity dissolve into confusion.  God is not the author of confusion, but He sure uses it to bring us to the end of ourselves, and makes us submit to the spiritual surgery necessary to root out the inner pain we’ve hidden for decades.

Now back to my original question:  what precedes worship that really touches God and releases true spiritual transformation?  It’s “Beholding Him.”  Take Isaiah’s vision in Isaiah 6.  “I saw the Lord high and lifted up,” and the result was a sense of Isaiah’s need for seeing himself as he really was.  Yes, he was a prophet before that experience, but seeing God in His “Totally Other” majesty released in Isaiah a cleansing and equipping that he never could have acquired in any other way.   Or how about Ezekiel?  When He saw the majesty and greatness of his God, he” fell on his face.”  Then and only then was Ezekiel ready to become the one God foresaw him to be.  Submit and “eat the scroll,” initially sweet to the taste, but then bitter in the stomach.

A Christian fellowship’s intense commitment to the presence of God  can be useful for some but destructive for others, depending upon whether the fellowship is balancing the attributes of the “transcendent” God with the experience of Him as a "feeling" and one who is closer than a brother.  Too much emphasis on transcendence produces sterile and lifeless knowledge, void of experience.  Too much emphasis on “feeling Him,” without the training that leads one to see God as more than just our “heavenly bellhop,” ultimately deceives some and stunts their ability to grow into strong and faithful disciples.  I call these lop-sided church fellowships “spiritual playpens.”  All the rattles and toys are there, but the tools to produce true spiritual depth are not.

C.S Lewis wrote an essay once called “Meditation in a Tool Shed.”  He described his being in an old tool shed.  The door was closed and light was streaming though the cracks in the door.  By the light he saw the inside of the shed, the dust particles floating in the air, the tools, dirt and cobwebs in the shed.  Then he moved to the door and stood in the light.  By it he could see through the crack to the outside.  He could see the blue of the skies and the clouds floating gently by.  His point, of course, was that by observation we can see one way, and by experience another.  Both are needed.  To behold God as He is, reveals the stuff both good and bad in our lives.  And then by standing in the light of experience we see beyond ourselves and into our destinies. 

This was how Jesus trained His first disciples; first observation, then the experience of service.  He came first to put the Father on display, and yes, did a little training.  But then came Pentecost and the transformation it brought to the disciples.  In our desperation to get away from the dryness of traditional Christianity (and boy is it dry), have we skipped an important step in helping people come to terms with what their needs for healing truly are?  And are we growing into true worshippers when we “feel” but don’t “behold”?