Worship should be the highest goal:
you are seeking the highest good
the highest good is God
you are seeking the highest pleasure
the highest pleasure is glorifying the greatest good, God
glorifying God REQUIRES real, authentic worship
singing words & pre-meditating thoughts and actions of praise are NOT way of authentic worship
authentic worship spawns spontaneously, as its own pleasure & justification, just as all other affections do
SPONTANEOUS AFFECTIONS
spontaneous – NOT including the logical rationalization of the outcome of good; not pre-meditated;
affection – its own means to an end; it is not a stepping stone to a greater feeling (you seek nothing more than to do this action at that particular moment);
ex) fear: a bear comes by your tent when you are camping. You do not think, 'it would be a good time to fear right now, because then I will produce adrenaline which will help me escape or deal with bear better. You are fearful automatically, spontaneously.
ex) grief: your brother calls you telling you that your mother died in a car accident. You spontaneously are stricken with grief. You go to be alone
Worship – it arises from the desires of your heart; you have a moment of revelation – God is good – you worship. You thank God for being created.
There is ONLY worship and non-worship. It is only called worship if it is from your desire. If it pleases you to do so. It's not 'true worship', it is plain 'worship'.
There is a word for the conscious acknowledgment and exclamation of God's goodness – praise.
The conscious exclamation of God's goodness without the acknowledgment is called empty praise, or fake praise. It's simply an adjective in front of a word. It's hypocrisy.
You make a statement, but you don't believe it to be true.
The conscious exclamation of God's goodness without the full grasp (which is MORE than acknowledgment) can be described as less-than-maximal praise. (it is not PARTIAL, which is less than what you can offer at a particular moment, and it is not maximum because over time things will be revealed to you that make a particular trait of God more understandable and greater than what you had previously understood that trait to be).
Grasping is when you know that God, theologically, has a particular trait, but you do not really KNOW it – you have yet to grasp it. you say it to be true, but you don't know why it's true, and you don't understand the extent to which it is true.
The reason that it isn't described as 'not praise' is because these conscious exclamations help you grasp, so they are good. They are prophetic in the sense that you start to believe what you say over and over. They are also, more-so, prophetic in the sense that you are describing what you want to become in the future – (but this is only the case when you recognize that what you are saying/thinking does not describe you now, and you want it to describe you in the future).
Because these things are helpful, they are good, and we cannot call them bad. (we are not to call good things evil – BIBLE VERSE)
ex) when you are in love, you will do whatever you can to be with that person, because you love them, and you like the pleasure you get from feeling loved and giving love.
We love God – we show it through worship. It is the most pleasing thing for us to love God. The reason that this is so hard to grasp is because, for most of us, we have had so few encounters of passionately loving God.
Just like with a girlfriend or wife, you're pleasure of loving them grows in proportion to the amount of times you show love to that person.
Many people don't ever get to a point of loving God that causes them to desire replication.
I have had a couple times of passionate worship, and I would LOVE to replicate those times. I desire to do so, because I remember all of the feelings associated with it. I remember the intense affection that was spurred through it.
Note: it is OKAY to seek the replication of something that will LEAD to affection. It is NOT okay to seek the replication of the affection IN ORDER TO achieve some other feeling. Affection is the highest goal.
Now, we understand the importance of self-evaluation – you have to know what you believe to be true, you have to know to what extent you grasp something.
You have to know what things help you to 'grow an affection' (whether that's singing. dancing, playing music, drawing, thinking, reading, etc.)
