What is it that makes the "divine service" live? In a technical age there must be a technique of worship so that the maximum of life is imparted to the service. Technique does not mean some kind of trick, but simply the study and application of certain principles based on human nature and experience.
What are some of the things that help make worship real and living? To begin with, an order of service that enables as many as possible to give expression to the different moods of adoration, confession, praise, intercession, and contemplation, in a pattern of public worship that is as meaningful and beautiful as we can make it. Also, singing. And there is the sermon--it must bring me something from God that I can under stand. And last, the most helpful technique at our disposal is simply being present in church. By coming together and filling the house of God we prepare an atmosphere for live worship.
That is something of the technique of worship. All elements are contributory, but none of them, not even all of them combined, make a living service of worship. It is the Spirit that giveth life.
The irony is that the Holy Spirit is for so many Christians the most vague and unreal part of their faith when He is actually the one who makes our religion real and our worship living. The Spirit evokes reality where before there was nothing. For the Spirit is God in action--God up-to-date. To believe in the Holy Spirit is to have living faith and living worship. The secret of live worship is the coming together of those who believe in the Spirit of the living God. Some come with more faith than others. Some know that they will meet with God as surely as they meet a friend by the fireside at home; others have just a desire to know more and to strengthen their faith; others have perhaps just a dim longing that God should be real in their lives.
"God is a Spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth"--"in spirit" meaning God is alive; and "in truth" meaning in complete sincerity.
On the day of Pentecost the disciples were "all with one accord in one place." They were God-fearing people; they believed, but not yet did they thrill with "joy and peace in believing"; they knew that God had done something new for the world in Jesus Christ, but they were not yet impelled to spread the news. But something happened to that group as they worshiped that morning; something tremendous, inspiring, transforming; something that they could not put in words, but felt they could describe after ward only in terms of a rushing mighty wind, and tongues of fire.
Experiencing the presence of God
If there is, in this world, one thing that is entirely impossible to put into words, it is the experience of the living presence of God. We justly give our imagination some leave of exercise here. The Spirit fell on them--a wind of irresistible and conquering energy--and the Spirit gave life, life to them as a new community with a new task in the world. They could never recall that day of Pentecost without contrasting what they were before it came and what they were after.
The Pentecostal outpouring was more than a mere flashing forth of divine energy, suddenly emitted and immediately withdrawn; it was the communication of divine power that remained in the church. It is singularly amazing that in spite of persecutions, rival movements, its own mistakes and divisions and sins--the church has survived. Why? Other societies that began with enthusiasm and vigor have, in the course of years settled down to a dull routine, choked with their own constitution, and convene through force of habit. We have all watched as these "little systems have their way, they have their way and pass away" (Tennyson).
And what is the epitaph we hear recited? "The spirit is gone out of them." That's just it. The spirit has gone! But the Holy Spirit never goes from the church. When we cease to believe in the Spirit, a blight does indeed fall upon the church. The machinery remains, the wheels turn, but nothing happens. But the Holy Spirit has not departed. The force of the life of the church is not an infolding of divine power, but a mobilization of the power already present. When that power is appropriated, the church springs to life. We call it a revival--it has happened a hundred times in different ways and different places. A revival means an experience with the living presence of God. All life in the church is born from above. Whatever looks like a revival, in the shape of extraordinary activity or intense feeling, but is not awakened by the Spirit of God is but the semblance and show of it, and is not the vital thing itself.
The spiritual power of the church is the result of the church's encounter with the Spirit, not the result of the Spirit's mechanical infusion into the church. The Holy Spirit is a personal Spirit. Every Old Testament and New Testament reference to a dynamistic sense of the Divine Spirit (for example, Rom. 5:5: "poured into our hearts," RSV) is used interchangeably with a personal reference (for example Rom. 8:16: "the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit," RSV). Just as the church lives by its relation to the Holy Spirit, so it has its power by relation to the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is an existential reality, and the church lives from this Source, who is transcendent of the church. The Holy Spirit saves the body of Christ from being a mere corpse, for the Spirit engrafts the congregation into Christ. The Holy Spirit is the real nexus between Christ and Christians. A nominal church is a dispirited church, a dead church, no church at all. In the words of John Owen: "Let men . . . cast them selves into what order, or institute what forms of worship they think proper; if the work of the Spirit be disclaimed, there is no church state among them."
What is it, then, that makes a divine worship service live? It is the Spirit that giveth life (2 Cor. 3:6).
