{"id":171,"date":"2012-06-22T08:39:59","date_gmt":"2012-06-22T08:39:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meditations.kafkasworld.com\/dir\/?p=171"},"modified":"2012-06-22T08:39:59","modified_gmt":"2012-06-22T08:39:59","slug":"heaven-eternal-worship-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2012\/06\/22\/heaven-eternal-worship-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Heaven and the \u201cEternal Worship Service\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
Heaven and the \u201cEternal Worship Service\u201d
\nCopyright 2011 by Shea Oakley
\nAll rights reserved<\/p>\n

If you have been a believer for very long you have probably heard some people in your church talk about the desirability of Heaven with a certain degree of hesitation, a degree of doubt. These are the brethren who find themselves wondering if the dwelling place of the blessed is some kind of an \u201ceternal worship service\u201d. By this they mean the idea of spending all eternity singing literally endless choruses of hymns before the throne of God as they do for 20 or 30 minutes before a worship band or a choir on a platform on a typical Sunday morning. For some this idea is not yet a very appealing one.<\/p>\n

I will not argue here about exactly what Heaven may be besides an eternal worship service. I do wish to submit that, for those who have at any time been caught up into the presence of God through corporate worship in song (or individual worship in song for that matter), such a Heaven isn\u2019t something to dread. It is instead something to be deeply desired, for to feel God\u2019s habitation of His peoples\u2019 adoration, as one of those people, is perhaps the greatest \u201chigh\u201d any human being can ever experience in this life. Those who only know boredom during such times simply have not yet been willing or able to truly focus on the One such times are centered around.<\/p>\n

I say this not to discourage the believer who has not yet experienced the spiritual delight of worship. I have only begun to more consistently experience this delight myself in the last few years of my own two decades of faith. Many factors can negatively effect being caught up in holy veneration of our Lord and not all of them are our fault. Moreover, if any Christian sincerely purposes in his or her heart to focus on the reality of the divine during times of corporate worship, no matter whether it evokes good feelings or not, those feelings will come eventually. The whole purpose of worship, remember, is to express our deep love and loyalty to the God Who has so loved us. Rapturous feelings of connection with Him are sometimes a wonderful result of loving God in this way, but they are not the object. The object of worship is to honor God\u2019s infinite worth with our wills. In a sense the purpose of worship is worship. It is its own fulfillment.<\/p>\n

That said we cannot forget that Heaven is the ultimate place of worship, a place where every earthly barrier to the vital adoration of our Creator has been completely and permanently removed, and for the true child of God, looking forward to this can be a source of sometimes overwhelming joy.<\/p>\n

In Heaven the conscious adulation we will know is also the ultimate connection, the ultimate consummation, the absolute perfection of our union with God. In heavenly worship we will be caught up into our Lord as we but tasted when we attempted to focus on Him on Earth. In our present frame we just cannot fully grasp how wondrous this will be. It is the answer to our heart\u2019s truest desire. What could be better than experiencing that which will connect us with Him as nothing else presently can, as nothing else is meant to while we still sojourn on this fallen planet and \u201csee through a glass darkly\u201d? This is what we were born and re-born for! It is our destiny and our purpose. We were made to glorify our Lord and Savior and we will not be truly whole and happy until we can do so in the paradise of His absolute presence in His Son, Jesus Christ, in the place that Son prepares for us.<\/p>\n

Remember this the next time you sing in church. Contemplate the ramifications of worship both now and one day in Heaven. Let your mind and heart ponder the goodness of your God as you sing to and for Him. My prayer is that, as you do, the idea of someday entering into an \u201ceternal worship service\u201d will become a source of joyful expectancy, no longer something to mistakenly dread.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heaven and the \u201cEternal Worship Service\u201d Copyright 2011 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved If you have been a believer for very long you have probably heard some people in your church talk about the desirability of Heaven with a certain degree of hesitation, a degree of doubt. These are the brethren who find themselves… <\/p>\n

Read more Heaven and the \u201cEternal Worship Service\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-christian","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6GkOA-2L","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":858,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2016\/07\/05\/christian-mysticism-is-not-an-oxymoron\/","url_meta":{"origin":171,"position":0},"title":"Christian Mysticism is Not an Oxymoron","date":"July 5, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2016 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved The soul of the believer can enter into the sublimity of God\u2019s ultimate reality in all its forms, in security and love, as long as the Spirit of Christ is truly leading. It is then that we can safely lose our self-consciousness\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":520,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2014\/05\/23\/seeking-christ-as-all\/","url_meta":{"origin":171,"position":1},"title":"Seeking Christ as All","date":"May 23, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 Copyright by Shea Oakley All rights reserved The ultimate focus of every believer must be Jesus Christ. This may seem obvious but the kind of focusing I speak of is a consuming one, one that goes beyond the \u2018Christian Norm\u2019 of praying, reading Scripture, and worshipping on Sunday mornings.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christian"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":36,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2012\/04\/17\/counterfeit-edens\/","url_meta":{"origin":171,"position":2},"title":"Counterfeit Eden\u2019s","date":"April 17, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 Copyright 2007 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved It was unbearable for the human race to lose the reality of Eden and so, almost immediately, the human race began trying to establish its own \u201cgardens\u201d. From the first discovery of the intoxicating effects of alcohol to the billion-dollar theme\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christian"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":738,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2015\/10\/28\/what-of-happiness\/","url_meta":{"origin":171,"position":3},"title":"What of Happiness?","date":"October 28, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright by Shea Oakley All rights reserved What is the place of human happiness in the economy of God? The world often tells us that nothing is more important than its pursuit. In fact \u201cthe pursuit of happiness\u201d is so important in the national zeitgeist of America that it is\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1067,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2017\/07\/04\/the-divine-answer-to-our-identity-crisis\/","url_meta":{"origin":171,"position":4},"title":"The Divine Answer to Our \u201cIdentity Crisis\u201d","date":"July 4, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright by Shea Oakley All rights reserved Many of us experienced great personal pain in our lives before coming to Christ. During that time we may have taken on ideas about the nature of who we are as individuals that need to be divinely corrected before we can enter into\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":838,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2016\/05\/26\/that-other-place\/","url_meta":{"origin":171,"position":5},"title":"\u201cThat Other Place\u201d","date":"May 26, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright\u00a0 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved Sometimes we need a refuge from our own lives. We may become so overwhelmed by the distractions of this world, and so troubled by the darkness of our own response to those distractions, that we need to have a place to go that\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}