A Deeper Experience of Worship

I'm going to start writing about what the Lord has been dealing with me about and pray that it comes across clearly...

Sunday morning, during Praise and Worship, I felt the Holy Spirit impress on me that the Father wanted me to enter into a deeper experience of worship with Him. I remember feeling that I wanted more, but didn't quite know how to proceed. He took me to 2 Kings 5:1-14, where Naaman went looking for healing from the Prophet Elisha. In this encounter, Elisha sent instructions for Naaman to go to the river Jordan and dip himself seven times. Naaman puffed up at that because the Jordan river was filthy. He told his servants that if Elisha told him to dip into the rivers of Damascus, at least he would be clean from the soil of the world when he came out (even if he didn't get healed...Jim's interpretation).

Naaman's servants reasoned with him that he would have willingly and probably gladly done that, but the plan isn't what we always think it should be. We have to trust in what God tells us to do without question.

So I'm left with the question of how does this work with entering into a deeper experience of worship?

Last night, at Intercessory Prayer, Brendan led us to a scripture that helped. Isaiah 58:6-8 says:

"This is the kind of fast day I'm after: to break the chains of injustice, get rid of exploitation in the workplace, free the oppressed, cancel debts. What I'm interested in seeing you do is: sharing your food with the hungry, inviting the homeless poor into your homes, putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families. Do this and the lights will turn on, and your lives will turn around at once. Your righteousness will pave your way. The God of glory will secure your passage."

What I hear the Lord instruct me through this passage is that He's more interested in me developing a LIFESTYLE of fasting than the occassional denying myself of something and then giving it back. Don't get me wrong, fasting in that fashion is biblical and necessary, but He wants an everyday, conscious effort, total heart committed, unwaivering determinated sacrificial lifestyle of being more like Him. Verse 6 talks about spreading the gospel that frees the captive and breaks the chains of bondage. Verse 7 talks about putting others first even at your own discomfort.

Again...what does this have to do with Naaman and what does Naaman have to do with a deeper experience of worship?

What I've come up with is this...there's an old saying that "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." In other words, there is no better way of telling someone how much you admire (or worship) them than by being like them. Worship is an expression of your love to the Lord for who He is. To be like him through sacrifice and obedience to His Word is the ultimate act of worship.

Naaman comes in to this in that I need to be sensitive to His direction so that I don't haphazardly ignore something that He tells me to do because I don't think it is worthy of my time or energy. I want to keep attentive to my spirit so that it "perks up" whenever it hears from the Lord and thereby keeps me in that deeper experience of worship.