Revival and Worship

Series: We Need Revival! An Interview with Dr. Henry Blackaby

Leslie Basham: Here’s Dr. Henry Blackaby. 

Dr. Henry Blackaby:   Worship for God’s people is their lifeline because their relationship to God is absolutely vital and worship is an encounter with God where God has an opportunity to adjust us back to him.   

Leslie:   This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Thursday, July 20th.  This week Henry Blackaby has been talking about two concepts that go together, revival and repentance.   

There’s something else that follows revival—worship.  Here’s Nancy to pick up the conversation.   

Nancy Leigh DeMoss:  Dr. Blackaby, we hear a lot about worship these days, worship styles, worship music, worship services.  You mentioned yesterday that if we’re not careful we’ll find that we aren’t worshiping the God of the Bible.   

Talk some about that especially in the context of revival. 

Dr. Blackaby:  A lost person cannot worship.  Worship is the exclusive prerogative of God’s people.   

Nancy:  But we’re trying to make our worship services palatable to lost people.   

Dr. Blackaby:  We’re trying to make them evangelistic, and if you make all the worship service evangelistic, then God’s people don’t worship.  When God’s people don’t worship, they die spiritually.   

We assume because we’re preaching the gospel, at least someone is being saved, and I’d say that’s not the key.    

The last part of the Great Commission is teach them to practice everything that I have commanded (see Matthew 28:18-20).  I believe that was the heart of God’s plan to redeem a world. 

When you entered into a relationship with Jesus Christ, you entered a covenant where He is Lord, and you’re not.  You make a covenant that everything that He commands, you’re going to do.  We enter into a covenant before a holy God.  But we don’t want to make any demands of people. 

Nancy:  We don’t want the word obligations.   

Dr. Blackaby:  No surrender.  We don’t talk about surrender to the Lordship of Christ at all.  It’s not friendly.  So what we’re doing is we’re far most interested in how people respond to what we’re doing than how God responds to what we’re doing.   

We’re so focused on evangelism that the people of God are dying spiritually.  Worship is designed for God’s people to have an encounter with the holiness of God to get their lives adjusted.   

But many, many, many churches are turning their worship services into evangelistic services. When you turn the service into an evangelistic service, God’s people don’t worship.  And when God’s people don’t worship, they die spiritually.   

Worship for God’s people is their lifeline because their relationship to God is absolutely vital. Worship is an encounter with God where God has an opportunity to adjust us back to Him.   

We’ve been out there all week long and the world has affected us.  Now we come to worship and the songs, for instance, that I hear people sing, they’re not theologically correct.   

For instance, they love to sing Come Just As You Are.   

Nancy:  That sounds good enough. 

Dr. Blackaby:  It sounds good, and it makes people feel I can come before God just the way I am and He will accept me with all of my sin. I don’t have to repent; I can just come as I am.  A lost person has to come just the way they are, but God has never permitted His people to come that way.   

He said, “Who can ascend the hill of the Lord and who can stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart and who has not lifted up his soul to vanity or sworn deceitfully.  He shall receive the blessing of the Lord” (Psalm 24:4-5, KJV).   

When they came to Mt. Sinai, God required three full days of cleansing.  They could not come just as they are.  As you look all the way through the Scripture, God is very conscious that when God’s people did come just the way they are, the worship was totally unacceptable to God. 

We have a song that makes people feel good, That On the Cross, Jesus Has You In His Mind.  That’s not true.  He came to do the will of the Father and was so immersed in doing the Father’s will, I believe the solitary concern on the heart of Jesus was the Father.   

I’ve listened to a lot of songs being created by young adults who can play a guitar and write some music, but they have theology about a quarter of an inch deep.   

Therefore, they’re giving pop psychology to make God’s people feel good, to have a good time and to have fun in worship.  God’s people were not designed to have fun in worship.  It was a time of brokenness before the Lord.   

He dwells in the high and holy place and with him who is broken and contrite and humble in spirit.  So what’s happening is God’s people have a huge sense of emptiness in their heart.  They know that they know about God, but they just don’t know how to experience Him.   

Of all the places where they ought to come face to face with the holy God is in worship.   

If someone were to ask me, “Henry, after 30 years of pastoring, what would you sense would be the most significant part of your ministry?”  I wouldn’t hesitate to answer—worship.   

I took exceeding care that God’s people entered into the presence of God, heard from Him, made adjustments to God in repentance and brokenness, were helped by the body to incorporate that into a new lifestyle in their life. 

Nancy:  So you’re defining worship not just as the music part of the service.   

Dr. Blackaby:  Often the music is the minor part of the worship service. When you change the words to become self-centered, then you have removed any sense that the songs can lead you to God.   

But I watch many of the songs, the new songs, and they have I and me and mine all they way through. 

Nancy:  Rather than being God-centered. 

Dr. Blackaby:  Without being God-centered.  Worship is exclusively a God-centered experience.  I would keep saying to people, “If you can come and truly worship and go out the same way you came in, you’ve haven’t worshiped no matter what you’ve said, or what you’ve felt.” 

Worship is not how you feel.  It’s whether you met God and He transformed your life.  He exposed sin so that you don’t live in that any longer and be denied what could be. 

He wants you.  It’s like Him. Jesus announced, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is right next to you” (Matthew 3:2, paraphrased). 

Every time I worship I say, “Oh God, is there anything that I need to repent of?”  Because to the degree which I keep sin in my life, to that degree, the kingdom of God is out.  There’s a direct correlation to the fullness in my life. He cannot fill my life where I’ve kept part of my life in sin.  I just can’t do that. 

Nancy:  Now somebody could hear your emphasis on repentance, brokenness, fear of the Lord, contrite heart, and could think, this sounds like a very negative, depressing way to live, and yet you’re now talking about that being the way to fullness.   

Dr. Blackaby:  Always, God’s call to repentance is always accompanied by the whole kingdom of heaven right next to you.  Every time God called for repentance, He always announced that the full presence of God and all that God is capable of doing in a love relationship to His people is waiting to unfold and be experienced in your life. 

So to me, the call to repentance is the most positive word that God ever gave His people.   

Nancy:  It’s the pathway to real joy that the church is looking for. 

Dr. Blackaby:  It’s the opening of the door to the fullness of life that God intended.   

Nancy:  We’re trying to find the fullness and the joy and the good feelings by taking short cuts around repentance, and yet you look at so many believers today who have the broken relationships, the frazzled lives, the depression, living on antidepressants, and they’re not finding the joy and the fullness. You’re really helping us to see that the pathway of holiness, the highway of holiness, the pathway of repentance is God’s way to experience the fullness He intended for us. 

Dr. Blackaby:  Yes, and I’m constantly returning to the freshness of what I see in Isaiah 35 where He says, “There is a highway of holiness and the unclean cannot walk on it” (verse 8, paraphrased).  But He has preceded it by saying that God wants to make the desert flower again.  He wants to make the wasteland blossom like the rose, and he wants to give sight to the blind and a voice to the mute and to open the ears of the deaf, and to make the lame jump (see verses 1-6). 

When you look at that, it’s exactly what Jesus did.  But what was Jesus’ message?  “Repent for the whole kingdom of heaven is right here.”  You’re going in the wrong direction.  And what happened when they did repent?  When they listened to the life of Jesus?   

Why the blind saw, the deaf heard, the lame leapt, the hungry were fed.  I mean, the whole kingdom of God was unfolded, and that’s exactly what God wants to do today.   

Nancy:  The end of that chapter in Isaiah talks about coming to Zion with singing, everlasting joy upon their heads, gladness and joy, sorrow and sighing should flee away (see verse 10).  We want the outcome without going down the pathway of holiness.   

Dr. Blackaby:  Unfortunately, they’re not being told.  The spiritual leaders are not giving them the Word that brings life.  We’re trying to use the world’s psychology but not the biblical spirituality, and so we’re talking the way the world does.  But we’re not talking the way God does. 

Nancy:  Well, once again, these have been heart-searching words from Dr. Henry Blackaby.  When we hear some of these things, there could be a temptation for us to develop a critical spirit to point the finger at our pastor, our Christian leaders, and to say, “The problem is with these guys.” 

Let me just encourage you that we have a biblical responsibility to pray for our pastors, to pray for our spiritual leaders, to intercede for them, to call out to God on their behalf, to ask God to make them men of courage and conviction with a boldness and a passion for His Word.   

So if you’ve been touched by what you’ve heard today, would you just take a moment to stop and pray for your pastor, and for pastors and Christian leaders all across this country?   

Leslie:  Revival is a very practical topic.  The conversation between Nancy Leigh DeMoss and Dr. Henry Blackaby has touched on repentance, worship, and praying for pastors.   

Revival is not just a week-long activity at church; it’s a lifestyle of submission to God and letting His life live through you. 

Nancy ’s workbook, Seeking Him, will help you to experience that kind of revival.  It will help you recognize areas of your life that need to be surrendered to God.  If you do, you’ll discover a new passion for purity, a heart for forgiveness, and a clear conscience.   

Seeking Him would be a perfect study for your small group at church or in your home. 

You can get a copy by visiting www.ReviveOurHearts.com.    

Next month is very special.  We’re inviting you to participate in the 30-Day TV-Free Challenge.  You’ll hear more in upcoming weeks on Revive Our Hearts.   

But you can visit our website now in order to find out more and to prepare for a revival of quiet in your home, and our phone number is 1-800-569-5959.   

Nancy, I’m glad that we have one more day on revival tomorrow.   

Nancy:  We’ll be talking about the role of prayer in true revival when we continue this conversation tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts with Dr. Henry Blackaby.     

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

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