the 3 stages of worship

Wow, I have so much to write, but it's already so late, and I have to wake up early!! I'll just give a little preview about the entry to come... Thank you God for bringing me back again and again to that final stage of worship =)

According to John Piper in Desiring God, there are three stages of worship:

Starting from the final stage, he writes that "we feel an unencumbered joy in the manifold perfection of God" in which "we are satisfied with the excellency of God, and we overflow with the joy of His fellowship" (96). This is when you feel like bursting into praise songs and constantly want to praise His name because all your worship comes genuinely and instantaneously from the heart.

The second stage is where we "taste" but "do not feel fullness, but rather longing and desire." We know that God is good, and we still "recall the goodness of the Lord-- but it seems far off" (96). During this stage though, we should not be discouraged and instead have hope that God will bring us back to the final stage again. 

The first stage is the lowest stage of worship. Piper writes that this is "where all genuine worship starts, and where it often returns for a dark season... [it] is the barrenness of soul that scarcely feels any longing, and yet is still granted the grace of repentant sorrow for having so little love" (96). Maybe we do not feel anything in our hearts, but as long as we continue to seek God because we are sinful beings, then He will fill us with fervent joy once again. 

Reading these words was so encouraging to me because often I find myself becoming complacent or falling into a routine and forgetting why I praise God or do certain things. When we find that we don't have that same passion as we first did, it's okay. Instead of despairing and thinking God's not there, we need faith to trust that God will fill us up with fervor once again =)

How great is our God! 

God is good =)

I am amazed at just how great God is, more and more, each and every day. He has graced me with so many blessings and so much love that I can't even comprehend it. He gives me a daily reminder just on how much I need Him and need to rely on Him. Without Him, I am nothing- I'm just like a nobody, but God makes me so unique. He molds me into His child, and for that, I am so grateful. God loves me, despite my imperfections. I may not respond or react the way God intends me to, but He loves me anyway. That seriously amazes me, because when people don't respond or react the way I want them to, I get so disappointed, and you can totally tell. But God doesn't do that to us. That's when I really start to understand a little more about His unconditional love. 

I seriously pray that God will use me so mightily this year- among my friends, my parents, and my future soonwons. 

God's love is so freakin' awesome =)

I'm going to leave this post with a passage that I read in Desiring God by John Piper:

"Once we had no delight in God, and Christ was just a vague historical figure. What we enjoyed was food and friendships and productivity and investments and vacations and hobbies and games and reading and shopping and sex and sports and art and TV and travel... but not God. He was an idea-even a good one- and a topic for discussion; but He was not a treasure of delight. 

Then something miraculous happened. It was like the opening of the eyes of the blind during the golden dawn. First the stunned silence before the unspeakable beauty of holiness. Then the shock and terror that we had actually loved the darkness. Then the settling stillness of joy that this is the soul's end. The quest is over. We would give anything if we might be granted to live in the presence of this glory forever and ever" (Piper, 71-72, emphasis added).