Have We Forgotten WHO We Came to Worship?

In Exodus 19 and 24, God told Israel exactly how to come near: boundaries, consecration, obedience. Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders were invited up the mountain. They saw the God of Israel and ate and drank in His presence (Exodus 24:9–11). Yet only Moses was called higher, into the cloud, where he stayed forty days and forty nights.

Moses did not approach however he pleased. He answered an invitation and followed instruction. God set the order of approach because He is HOLY.

Hebrews 12 brings us to another mountain, Mount Zion, the city of the living God. Through the blood of Jesus, we no longer need Moses or an earthly priest to stand between us and the Father. Our great High Priest has opened a new and living way (Hebrews 10:19–22).

What a privilege. But hear this:

The God who came down on Sinai is the God who welcomes us today. His glory has not dimmed. His majesty has not shrunk. And Hebrews still says:

“Since we are receiving a Kingdom that cannot be destroyed, let us be thankful and please God by worshiping him with holy fear and awe. For our God is a devouring fire.”

(Hebrews 12:28–29, NLT)

If God is still holy, shouldn’t that change how we come to Him?

Scripture gives us a window into worship as it is meant to be. In Revelation 4, the living creatures around the throne never stop saying:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty—the one who always was, who is, and who is still to come.”

(Revelation 4:8, NLT)

The twenty-four elders fall down before Him and lay their crowns at His feet. In Revelation 5, the song grows until countless voices are declaring that the Lamb is worthy.

Look at what is missing from that scene. There is no program. There is no performance. Nobody is filling time. Everything in heaven is turned toward Him, and God is the center of every eye and every song.

Jesus taught us to pray, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” That includes how we worship.

Paul warned Timothy that in the last days people would “consider nothing sacred” (2 Timothy 3:2, NLT), holding a form of godliness while denying its power (2 Timothy 3:5).

Have we become so familiar with church that we treat the sacred as common? Have our conversations, activities, and programs begun to matter more to us than the One we came to worship?

I am not talking about rigid, man-made rules. Paul’s call for gatherings to be “decently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:40) was given in the context of spiritual gifts, yet the principle stands: we honor God when we gather with reverence. And God’s order must never choke out the Holy Spirit. Reverence does not mean silence all the time. It means knowing when to celebrate His greatness, when to bow before His holiness, and when to be still and listen.

Jesus said the Father is looking for a certain kind of worshiper:

“For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.”

(John 4:24, NLT)

At The I AM Summit, I taught a biblical pattern for drawing near to God. It is not a formula. It is a posture we can live in daily and carry into the gathering.

The Psalms are full of the word Selah, a pause. We have scheduled the pause out of our gatherings. We watch the clock, the transitions, the next song.

When Solomon’s temple was dedicated and the glory of the Lord filled the house, the priests could not continue to minister (2 Chronicles 5:13–14). The presence interrupted the program.

Not every moment needs another song. Not every silence needs to be filled. Sometimes the most reverent response to God’s presence is to stop and listen.

Think of the river in Ezekiel 47: ankle-deep, then knee-deep, then waist-deep, then a river too deep to cross on foot. It is a vision of restoration, and it is also a picture of the depths of knowing God. There are depths of fellowship we have not yet touched. To go deeper, we must surrender our agendas and our need to control every moment.

I am a terrible song-service leader. I was ruined, in a good way.

After I experienced revival worship in 2011 and received a revelation about revival worship for the last days (I wrote a book about it), I was never the same. I cannot go back to singing just to have a song service. Believe me, I’ve tried. It grieves me when worship is treated as entertainment, or when I am asked to sing to fill a gap before the next part of the program.

Worship was never meant to be a filler.

Scripture is sobering here. In Amos 5, God told His people, “Take away from me the noise of your songs” (Amos 5:23, ESV). They were gathering, singing, and keeping their feasts, and God was rejecting it all. Their worship did not match their hearts or their lives. Then He said:

“But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

(Amos 5:24, ESV)

Isaiah 1:13–17 carries the same warning. God was not asking them to choose between worship and justice. He was calling them back to the order He had always set.

When Jesus was asked which commandment is greatest, He answered:

“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: Love your neighbor as yourself.”

(Matthew 22:37–39, NLT)

Look at the sequence. First, love God with everything. Second, love your neighbor. When we reverse it, worship becomes noise. When we skip the second, worship becomes empty. The love we pour out before Him is meant to overflow into how we treat the people around us: the widow, the foreigner, the poor, the person sitting next to us who is hurting.

It is possible to have gifted musicians, powerful conferences, and perfectly run services, and miss the heart of worship. God is not impressed with performance. He is looking for surrendered hearts and lives that carry His love into the world.

This is not condemnation. It is an invitation back.

Imagine gatherings where people come expecting God to show up, where the lost are saved, the broken are healed, the bound are set free, and even unbelievers say, “God is truly among you” (1 Corinthians 14:24–25).

Azusa Street began in 1906 with a small group of believers seeking God in Los Angeles, and word of what God was doing carried to the nations. Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would come upon us and make us His witnesses to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). Why would we settle for less?

Oh, that we would hunger again. That we would care more about pleasing God than impressing people, more about His glory than our programs, more about His presence than another experience. We don’t need another performance. We need the Church awakened to the holiness and glory of the living God.