What Is Worship Quotes & Sayings

We don't always choose the best solution but we carry on regardless, trying to remain upright and decent in order to do honor not to the walls or the doors or the windows but to the empty space inside, the space where we worship and venerate what is dearest and most important to us. — Paulo Coelho

Donald Lydecker: Alcoholism is not a disease, it's a failing. You've turned it into a church. You worship the altar of self-pity. I come to these rooms for one reason, to remember what I don't want to become ... helpless, impotent, and weak. — James Cameron

It is imperative that the Christian, at the beginning of his pursuit to understand what true worship is, gets it clear that the object of our worship is to be God and God alone. — R.C. Sproul

God does not need our money. He owns everything, including "our" money. What He wants [us] to discover is where our central focus of worship lies. Is that focus on God or our money? — Billy Graham

Take time to listen to what is said without words, to obey the law too subtle to be written, to worship the unnameable and to embrace the unformed. — Laozi

Why does everyone worship them? I mean, they're beautiful but ... " I shrugged. "Lots of people in this world are beautiful."
"They're popular because they're cheerleaders," he said.
I rolled my eyes. "What is it with this town and cheerleaders? — Sarra Cannon

Recall the gesture of abasement, warlock. You make it in recognition of your own humility. A god's powers are immeasurable and before them you are nothing. Therefore you would worship your god and surrender your life into its hands. But it doesn't want your life, and knows not what to do with your longing, helpless soul. In ritual and symbol you have lost yourselves. Could the god make you understand, it would make you understand this simple truth: the only thing worthy of worship is humility itself. — Steven Erikson

The death of 'the god of western theism', the destruction of the idol, is opening the way to a rediscovery of the acts of the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, the living God of the worship and confession of the Fathers of the Church, he who makes himself fully known in Jesus Christ, and who in his Word and his Spirit is present and at work throughout the whole of what he has made. — A.M. Allchin

No, take more! What may be sworn by, both divine and human, Seal what I end withal! This double worship, Where [one] part does disdain with cause, the other Insult without all reason; where gentry, title, wisdom, Cannot conclude but by the yea and no Of general ignorance - it must omit Real necessities, and give way the while To unstable slightness. Purpose so barr'd, it follows Nothing is done to purpose. Therefore beseech you - You that will be less fearful than discreet; That love the fundamental part of state More than you doubt the change on't; that prefer A noble life before a long, and wish To jump a body with a dangerous physic That's sure of death without it - at once pluck out The multitudinous tongue; let them not lick The sweet which is their poison. Your dishonor Mangles true judgment, and bereaves the state Of that integrity which should become't; Not having the power to do the good it would, For th' ill which doth control't. — William Shakespeare

I don't intend to let my intellect dominate me, and the last thing I want to do is worship knowledge or people who have knowledge! I don't give a damn for anyone's aggregation of facts, except that it be a reflection [of] basic sensitivity which I do demand ... I intend to do everything ... to have one way of evaluating experience - does it cause me pleasure or pain and I shall be very cautious about rejecting the painful - I shall anticipate pleasure everything and find it, too, for it is everywhere! I shall involve myself wholly ... everything matters! The only thing I resign is the power to resign, to retreat: the acceptance of sameness and the intellect. I am alive ... I am beautiful ... what else is there? — Susan Sontag

All really imaginative literature is only the contrast between the weird curves of Nature and the straightness of the soul. Man may behold what ugliness he likes if he is sure that he will not worship it; but there are some so weak that they will worship a thing only because it is ugly. — G.K. Chesterton

I would think that if you understood what sex education is, you would get down on your knees and worship a condom. — Jane Fonda

I love her for what she has dared to be, for her hardness, her cruelty, her egoism, her perverseness, her demoniac destructiveness. She would crush me to ashes without hesitation. She is a personality created to the limit. I worship her courage to hurt, and I am willing to be sacrificed to it. She will add the sum of me to her. She will be June plus all that I contain. — Anais Nin

The charge of blasphemy is loaded. The point is to pack a wallop behind the charge that in our worship services God simply doesn't come through for who he is. He is unwittingly belittled. For those who are stunned by the indescribable magnitude of what God has made, not to mention the infinite greatness of the One who made it, the steady diet on Sunday morning of practical how-to's and psychological soothing and relational therapy and tactical planning seem dramatically out of touch with Reality - the God of overwhelming greatness. — John Piper

PAYING ATTENTION TO GOD We bless GOD, oh yes - we bless him now, we bless him always! PSALM 115:18, THE MESSAGE Prayer is the most thoroughly present act we have as humans, and the most energetic: it sockets the immediate past into the immediate future and makes a flexible, living joint of them. The Amen gathers what has just happened into the Maranatha of the about to happen and produces a Benediction. We pay attention to God and lead others to pay attention to God. It hardly matters that so many people would rather pay attention to their standards of living, or their self-image, or their zeal to make a mark in the world. The reality is God: worship or flee. THE CONTEMPLATIVE PASTOR — Eugene H. Peterson

Worship of The Lotus Feet of The Spiritual Master: There is no work as auspicious as serving the spiritual master. Of all worship, the worship of the Supreme Personality of Godhead is the greatest but the worship of the lotus feet of the spiritual master is even greater than the worship of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Unless this is firmly realized we cannot understand what saintly association means, we cannot understand what the shelter of a spiritual master means, we cannot understand that we are dependent and he is our maintainer. — Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati

Worship matters. It matters to God because he is the one ultimately worthy of all worship. It matters to us because worshiping God is the reason for which we were created. And it matters to every worship leader, because we have no greater privilege than leading others to encounter the greatness of God. That's why it's so important to think carefully about what we do and why we do it. — Bob Kauflin

This is the essence of worship: entering into God's presence and expressing God's worth, both because of who he is and because of what he has done. — Kevin Scott

Men and women run away from every goal, whether worldly or spiritual, because they overestimate the initial task. The proper way is a bit at a time. It is the same if someone eats too much; they should diminish it daily by a small bit, gradually. In that way, before a year or two have passed, they will have cut down what they eat by half, reducing it in such a way that their body does not notice. So it is with worship, withdrawing into solitude, attending to the service of God, and prayer. When a person enters upon the Way of God, for a while their prayers will be short. But after that, if they pray with their whole heart, their prayers will go on and on without end. — Jalaluddin Rumi

in India, Bhakti or what may be called the path of devotion or hero-worship, plays a part in its politics unequalled in magnitude by the part it plays in the politics of any other country in the world. Bhakti in religion may be the road to the salvation of a soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship. — Ramachandra Guha

In the end, our worship is more about what we do than what we say. — Louie Giglio

Turn your face toward the sacred Mosque (Koran 2:144,149,150) Commentary: The word "sacred" means that a heart which has not disengaged itself from the sphere of the soul and the sphere of created beings is forbidden to penetrate into this place ... "Wherever you are, turn your face" [toward the sacred Mosque] means, "Wherever you are, in the accomplishment of works of worship or in the ordinary acts of life, contemplate Him - in what you eat, in what you drink, in him or her whom you marry, always knowing that He is at once the Contemplator and the Contemplated ... " — Abdelkader El Djezairi

We live in the age of Noah (a.s.) in the sense that a flood of distraction accosts us. It is a slow and subtle drowning. For those who notice it, they engage in the remembrance of God. The rites of worship and devotion to God's remembrance (dhikr) are planks of the ark. When Noah (a.s.) started to build his ark, his people mocked him and considered him a fool. But he kept building. He knew what was coming. And we know too. — Hamza Yusuf

What is the pattern of worship that best conveys the richness of divine grace, faithfully interprets the gospel in our modern world and helpfully consolidates the body of Christ? — Geoffrey W Bromiley

How many generations of ours have worn themselves out by rubbing their foreheads on the steps of the god? But when did the god take pit on you? What big thing has he done for you? Generation after generation, you have been used to clean the village of its garbage and god gave you the dead animals to eat. In spite of all that, god did not show you any pity. It is not this god that you worship, it is your ignorance. — B.R. Ambedkar

There is no one there to see it. The world is doing what it always does, demonstrating itself to itself. The world has no interest in the little figures that come and go, the phantoms that worry and worship, that rake the graveled paths and erect the occasional rock garden, the bronze boy-man, the hammered cup for snow to fall into. — Michael Cunningham

I have long believed that celebrity, the way we worship and package and sell our pop stars, is what filled the need for gods that was once filled by the pictures in stained glass. Hollywood is post-Christian Venice - in other words, a pantheon of saints without the hassle and heartache of religion. — Rich Cohen

His desire to bless you goes infinitely beyond your own personal desire to secure His blessing. There is always peace in His presence. Do not disturb this by anxiety to know what is in store for tomorrow. Out of the very tranquility of worship will be born the guidance you need. — Frances J Roberts

The worst mistake has been that Christians have tried to make their church programs or worship services their third place place other than their home or workplace where they can relax and be in good company on a regular basis . The key is that third places need to be in public zones."- What if more Christians spent their regular "church" time in places where they could meet others and begin relationships with them What might happen — Hugh Halter & Matt Smay

The Constitution does not guarantee freedom of worship. It guarantees freedom of religion. And this is what I call America's first freedom. — Rick Warren

Does not every true man feel that he is himself made higher by doing reverence to what is really above him? — Thomas Carlyle

But what they find most amazing and despicable is the insanity of those who all but worship the rich, to whom they owe nothing and who can do them no harm; they do so for no other reason except that they are rich, knowing full well that they are so mean and tightfisted that they will certainly never give them one red cent during their whole lives. — Thomas More

Your calling is in what you read, think and talk about — Sunday Adelaja

Frankly, I am quite tired of those who tout Christianity as a way to stop smoking or drinking or break wild habits of the world. Is that all Christianity is, to keep us from some bad habit? Of course, regeneration will clean us up, and the new birth will make a man right. If that is what Christianity is all about, what about the person whose life is not that bad? The purpose of God in redemption is to restore us again to the divine imperative of worship. We were created to worship, but sin destroyed that ability. Jesus Christ, on the cross, redeemed us and brought us back to the place where we now can worship and have fellowship with God Almighty. My clean life is a by-product of my conversion. My life may have pointed out to me that I needed a drastic change, but that is not the purpose for which I was converted. The essence of conversion is to bring me into a right relationship with God and have fellowship with Him. — A.W. Tozer

Where those two energies [male and female energies] intersect, all creativity is possible. We already have divine creative energy within us. And what is the most powerful of these energies? The energy that patriarchy and misogyny constantly try to repress. The divine female sexual energy. The creative energy of the female. That is why I worship divine sexual female energy. — Russell Brand

We spend our incomes for paint and paper, for a hundred trifles, I know not what, and not for the things of a man. Our expense is almost all for conformity. It is for cake that we run in debt; 't is not the intellect, not the heart, not beauty, not worship, that costs so much. Why needs any man be rich? Why must he have horses, fine garments, handsome apartments, access to public houses, and places of amusement? Only for want of thought. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

DAY 10 Thinking about My Purpose POINT TO PONDER: The heart of worship is surrender. VERSE TO REMEMBER: "Surrender your whole being to him to be used for righteous purposes." ROMANS 6:13B (TEV) QUESTION TO CONSIDER: What area of my life am I holding back from God? — Rick Warren

Man is not to direct or to be directed anymore than a tree or a cloud or a stone

Man is not to rule or be ruled anymore than a faith or a truth or a love

Man is not to doubt or to be doubted anymore than a wave or a seed or a fire

There is no problem in living which life hasn't answered to its own need

And we cannot direct, rule, or doubt what is beyond our highest ability to understand we can only be humble before it we can only worship ourselves because we are a part of it

The eye in the leaf is watching out of our fingers
The ear in the stone is listening through our voices
The thought of the wave is thinking in our dreams
The faith of the seed is building with our deaths — Kenneth Patchen

Perhaps it is because my conviction is anyone may believe whatever they wish. Intolerance is a greater offense against God than holding a strange or even inconsistent belief. You have the right to worship what you wish - a pile of stones in your garden - as long as you do not injure others. — Anne Perry

All the young people in fashion worship the people who have been around a long time. I think it is about keeping something going through the generations. Take my work: Just because I'm not 20 anymore doesn't mean that people don't appreciate what I do. — Alber Elbaz

Zen does not ask you to believe in anything you cannot confirm for yourself. It does not ask you to memorize any sacred words. It does not require you to worship any particular thing or revere any particular person. It does not offer any rules to obey. It does not give you any hierarchy of learned men whose profound teachings you must follow to the letter. It does not ask you to conform any code of dress. It does not ask you to allow anyone else to choose what is right for you and what is wrong. Zen is complete absence of belief. Zen is the complete lack of authority. Zen tears away every false refuge in which you might hide from the truth and forces you to sit naked before what is real. That's real refuge. — Brad Warner

Through study and learning they earn the pleasure of princes-
What comes of such learning?
Butter never rises from boiling sour milk.
Speak bird! What do you yearn by pecking newly sprouted grain?
Nursing one broken heart, Bahu, is equal to the worship of many years. — Sultan Bahu

To what profit is it that we dwell in Jerusalem, if we do not see the King's face? And when He comes forth from His royal chambers, accompanied with blessing, are we to hold ourselves at leisure that we may yield Him worship and offer Him service? — David McIntyre

Worship-based prayer seeks the face of God before the hand of God. God's face is the essence of who He is. God's hand is the blessing of what He does. God's face represents His person and presence. God's hand expresses His provision for needs in our lives. I have learned that if all we ever do is seek God's hand, we may miss His face; but if we seek His face, He will be glad to open His hand and satisfy the deepest desires of our hearts. — Daniel Henderson

No, not death. We have chosen life eternal, the resurrection of the ... '
'That is a story to tell children. The truth is that for thousands of years we looked to what was living. Now you look to what is dead, you worship a dead man and tell one another that this world is not for us, while the next is all that matters. Only there is no next world. — Gore Vidal

It's easy: You simply follow the trail of your time, your affection, your energy, your money, and your allegiance. At the end of that trail you'll find a throne; and whatever, or whoever, is on that throne is what's of highest value to you. On that throne is what you worship. — Louie Giglio

To break up the superstition and worship of legality should be our aim. Nothing would please me more than to see Inspector Heat and his likes take to shooting us down in broad daylight with the approval of the public. Half our battle would be won then; the desintegration of the old morality would have set in in its very temple. That is what you ought to aim at. But you revolutionists will never understand that. You plan the future, you lose yourselves in reveries of economical systems derived from what is; where as what's wanted is a clean sweep and a clear start for a new conception of life. That sort of future will take care of itself if you will only make room for it. Therefore I would shovel my stuff in heaps at the corners of the streets if I had enough for that; and as I haven't, I do my best by perfecting a really dependable detonator. — Joseph Conrad

Israel's monomaniacal Spinoza worship is amusing and exasperating by turns. For a start, his insistence that Spinoza was the singular font of the Enlightenment leaves him without a story of the Enlightenment's intellectual or cultural origins. Every historian has to begin somewhere, but the fact that Israel begins with Spinoza, and then reduces most of what follows the philosopher to a footnote, leaves his account of the Enlightenment founded on something like immaculate conception. — Samuel Moyn

She likes what all women like. Consideration, thoughtfulness, a man who will worship the very ground she walks on. Who could not bear to live if she was not in his life. A man who would sacrifice what he wants most for her." He stared. "You sound like you're reading from a romantic novel." "You asked what women want and there you have it." She shrugged. "For most women, such a man is only found between the pages of a novel. They are forced to settle for far less. — Victoria Alexander

Part of what my work has always been about is to show that the apocalyptic character of the gospel makes the everyday possible. It gives us the time that lets us care for one another as we are ill, helps us care for one another as we experience broken relationships, and helps us take the time to worship God in a world of such violence. — Stanley Hauerwas

What makes worship amazing is the object of our worship. — Francis Chan

When service is unto people, the bones can grow weary, the frustration deep. Because, agrees Dorothy Sayers, "whenever man is made the center of things, he becomes the storm-center of trouble. The moment you think of serving people, you begin to have a notion that other people owe you something for your pains ... You will begin to bargain for reward, to angle for applause ... When the eyes of the heart focus on God, and the hands on always washing the feet of Jesus alone - the bones, they sing joy and the work returns to it's purest state: eucharisteo. The work becomes worship, a liturgy of thankfulness. "The work we do is only our love for Jesus in action" writes Mother Theresa. "If we pray the work ... if we do it to Jesus, if we do it for Jesus, if we do it with Jesus ... that's what makes us content." Deep joy is always in the touching of Christ - in whatever skin He comes to us in. Page 194 — Ann Voskamp

Passionate worship always leads to personal witness. Always. And what that means is ... if we're not witnessing, there's a problem with our worship. We're not seeing God for who He is! We're not realizing what He's done! We're not realizing the magnitude of what He's done for our souls! — David Platt

What an enormous magnifier is tradition! How a thing grows in the human memory and in the human imagination, when love, worship, and all that lies in the human heart, is there to encourage it — Thomas Carlyle

A couple you do not recognize - visitors, strangers - come to the door. How are you to view these people and what is your responsibility towards them? ... To assume that these visitors are really like you, that there are no real difference between you and them, and that the highest goal possible is that you and the other members of your congregation will become intimate friends with them and invite them into the private spaces of your life. — Thomas G. Long

Worship is the believer's response of all that they are - mind, emotions, will, body - to what God is and says and does. — Warren W. Wiersbe

My mom is very religious and she said, 'Whatever you think about all the time, that's what you worship.' If that's the case I'd like everyone to pop open their Diet Coke cans and turn to page 37 of their People Magazines. In this holy scripture, we read the parable of Ms. Valerie Bertinelli. — Maria Bamford

We don't go to Sabbath meetings to be entertained or even solely
to be instructed. We go to worship the Lord. It is an individual
responsibility, and regardless of what is said from the pulpit, if one
wishes to worship the Lord in spirit and truth, he may do so by
attending his meetings, partaking of the sacrament, and
contemplating the beauties of the gospel If the service is a
failure to you, you have failed. No one can worship for you. You
must do your own waiting upon the Lord. — Spencer W. Kimball

The meaning of your life depends on which ideas you permit to use you. Who you think you are determines where you put your attention. Where you direct your attention creates your life experiences, and brings a new course of events into being. Where you habitually put your attention is what you worship. What do you worship in this mindstream called your life? — Gangaji

The church exists primarily for two closely correlated purposes: to worship God and to work for his kingdom in the world ... The church also exists for a third purpose, which serves the other two: to encourage one another, to build one another up in faith, to pray with and for one another, to learn from one another and teach one another, and to set one another examples to follow, challenges to take up, and urgent tasks to perform. This is all part of what is known loosely as fellowship. — N. T. Wright

What is seen is not the Truth
What is cannot be said
Trust comes not without seeing
Nor understanding without words
The wise comprehends with knowledge
To the ignorant it is but a wonder
Some worship the formless God
Some worship his various forms
In what way He is beyond these attributes
Only the Knower knows
That music cannot be written
How can then be the notes
Say Kabir, awareness alone will overcome illusion. — Kabir

I'm not a universalist, and the way I talk about final loss is this: People worship idols - money, whatever. Their humanness gets reshaped around the idol - you become like what you worship. That's one of the basic spiritual laws. — N. T. Wright

The market is a tool, and a useful one. But the worship of this tool is a hollow faith. Far more important than any tool is what you make with it. — Eric Schlosser

What seems wrong to you is right for him
What is poison to one is honey to someone else.
Purity and impurity, sloth and diligence in worship,
These mean nothing to Me.
I am apart from all that.
Ways of worshipping are not to be ranked as better
or worse than one another.
Hindus do Hindu things.
The Dravidian Muslims in India do what they do.
It's all praise, and it's all right.
It's not I that's glorified in acts of worship.
It's the worshippers! I don't hear
the words they say. I look inside at the humility.
That broken-open lowliness is the Reality,
not the language! Forget phraseology.
I want burning, burning.
Be Friends
with your burning. Burn up your thinking
and your forms of expression! — Karen Armstrong

I do not love thee less for what is done,
And cannot be undone. Thy very weakness
Hath brought thee nearer to me, and henceforth
My love will have a sense of pity in it,
Making it less a worship than before. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

one who gives himself/herself preeminently to the Word, neglecting prayer, will become heady and doctrinal-likely to quarrel about "points", and occupied with theoretical Christianity to the hurt of his soul and irritation of his brethren. On the other hand, one who gives himself/herself much prayer while neglecting the Word is likely to become introspective, mystical, and sometimes fanatical. But he/she who reads the Word of God reverently and humbling seeking to know the will of God, and then gives himself/herself to prayer, confessing and judging what the scriptures have condemned in his ways and words, and thoughts, will have his/her soul drawn out in worship also, and thus grow both in grace and in knowledge, becoming a well rounded follower of Christ. Apart from a knowledge of the Word, prayer will lack exceedingly in intelligence ; for the objective must never precede the subjective, and must not be divorced there from — H. A Ironside

Worship is about what we love. What we live for. It's about who we are before God. — Bob Kauflin

This is that CONSOLATION DES ARTS which is the key-note of Gautier's poetry, the secret of modern life foreshadowed - as indeed what in our century is not? - by Goethe. You remember what he said to the German people: 'Only have the courage,' he said, 'to give yourselves up to your impressions, allow yourselves to be delighted, moved, elevated, nay instructed, inspired for something great.' The courage to give yourselves up to your impressions: yes, that is the secret of the artistic life - for while art has been defined as an escape from the tyranny of the senses, it is an escape rather from the tyranny of the soul. But only to those who worship her above all things does she ever reveal her true treasure: else will she be as powerless to aid you as the mutilated Venus of the Louvre was before the romantic but sceptical nature of Heine. — Oscar Wilde

Becoming an object of worship is to serve God for what you can get from him — Sunday Adelaja

The way in which a faith community shapes language about God implicity represents what it takes to be the highest good, the profoundest truth, the most appealing beauty ... While officially it is rightly and consistently said that God is spirit and so beyond identification with either male or female sex, yet the daily language of preaching, worship, catechesis, and instruction conveys a different message: God is male, or at least more like a man than a woman, or at least more fittingly addressed as male than as female. — Elizabeth A. Johnson

The secret to freedom from enslaving patterns of sin is worship. You need worship. You need great worship. You need weeping worship. You need glorious worship. You need to sense God's greatness and to be moved it - moved to tears and moved to laughter - moved by who God is and what he has done for you. — Timothy Keller

As a God, you can only ever be as healthy as your
worshippers. They are after all what your body is made of. — Theodore Volgoff

The clothing is moving, the external version is moving. Whether the internal version is moving or not it is a different matter. It is good to practice Ayurveda, it is good to worship the Gods and Goddesses, it is good to do bhajans. Of course, depending on what your own personal development is, that will determine how, in what way and how well you will be able to connect to that tradition and bring it to life inside yourself. — Robert Svoboda

What do you think Dimitri? Is this a good idea, Dimitri? Please give us your blessing so that we can fall down and worship you, Dimitri. — Richelle Mead

Though, I am here bodily, still I know what you do; beyond the seven seas. Go wherever you will, over the wide world, I am with you. My abode is in your heart and I am within you. Always worship Me, Who is seated in your heart, as well as in the hearts of all beings. — Sathya Sai Baba

Good Christian liturgy is friendship in action, love taking thought, the covenant relationship between God and his people not simply discovered and celebrated like the sudden meeting of friends, exciting and worthwhile though that is, but thought through and relished, planned and prepared
an ultimately better way for the relationship to grow and at the same time a way of demonstrating what the relationship is all about. — N. T. Wright

These three ways correspond in our tradition to the main aspects of religious existence: worship, learning, and action. The three are one, and we must go all three ways to reach the one destination. For this is what Israel discovered: the God of nature is the God of history, and the way to know Him is to do His will. To — Abraham Joshua Heschel

The state is a human institution, not a superhuman being. He who says "state" means coercion and compulsion. He who says: There should be a law concerning this matter, means: The armed men of the government should force people to do what they do not want to do, or not to do what they like. He who says: This law should be better enforced, means: The police should force people to obey this law. He who says: The state is God, deifies arms and prisons. The worship of the state is the worship of force. — Ludwig Von Mises

God is no gainer even from our worship. He was in no need of that external glory of His grace which arises from His redeemed, for He is glorious enough in Himself without that. What was it that moved Him to predestinate His elect to the praise of the glory of His grace? It was, as Ephesians 1:5 tells us, according to the good pleasure of His will. — Arthur W. Pink

The liturgy is the place where we wait for Jesus to show up. We don't have to do much. The liturgy is not an act of will. It is not a series of activities designed to attain a spiritual mental state. We do not have to apply will pressure. To be sure, like basketball or football, it is something that requires a lot of practice
its rhythms do not come naturally except to those who have been rehearsing them for years. On some Sundays the soul will indeed battle to even pay attention. In the normal course of worship, we do not have to conjure up feelings or a devotional mood; we are not required to perform the liturgy flawlessly. Such anxious effort ... blind us to what is really going on.
We do have to show up, and we cannot leave early. But if we will dwell there, remain in place, wait patiently, Jesus will show up. — Mark Galli

Man may behold what ugliness he likes if he is sure that he will not worship it; but there are some so weak that they will worship a thing only because it is ugly. These must be chained to the beautiful. It is not always wrong even to go, like Dante, to the brink of the lowest promontory and look down at hell. It is when you look up at hell that a serious miscalculation has probably been made. — G.K. Chesterton

Children, when we go to the temple, do not hurry to have darshan, then make some offering and return home in a hurry. We should stand there patiently in silence for some time and try to visualize the beloved deity in our hearts. If possible, we should sit down and meditate. At each step, remember to do japa. Amma doesn't say that the offerings and worship are not necessary, but of all the offerings we make, what the Lord wants most is our hearts! — Mata Amritanandamayi

It is God who gives us the spirit of worship (Psalm 133:3), and it is what we know of God that produces this spirit of worship. We might say that worship is simply theology, doctrine, what we think about God, going into top gear! Instead of merely thinking about Him, we tell Him, in prayer and praise and song, how great and glorious we believe Him to be! — Sinclair B. Ferguson

Finally, Christians were accused of being subversive, for they refused to worship the emperor and thus destroyed the very fiber of society. The apologists answered that it was true that they refused to worship the emperor or any other creature, but that in spite of this they were loyal subjects of the empire. What the emperor needs - they said - is not to be worshiped, but to be served; and those who serve him best are those who pray for him and for the empire to the only true God. — Justo L. Gonzalez

To the extent that we are trapped by the overvaluing, idealizing tendency, we are not free fully to celebrate the limited but real goods of creation. Idolatry by definition is not an accurate assessment of creaturely goods, but an overvaluing of them so as to miss the richness of their actual, limited values. If I worship my tennis trophies, my Mondrian, my family tree, my Kawasaki, or my bank account, then I do not really receive those goods for what they actually are - limited, historical, and finite - goods which are vulnerable to being taken away by time and death. When I pretend that a value is something more than it is, ironically I value it less appropriately than it deserves. Biblical psychology invites us to relate ourselves absolutely to the absolute and relatively to the relative. — Thomas C. Oden

The better (i.e., the more accurately) we know God through his Word, the more genuine our worship will be. In fact, the moment we veer from what is true about God, we're engaging in idolatry. Regardless of what we think or feel, there is no authentic worship of God without a right knowledge of God. — Bob Kauflin

What is going on in America is extreme. The youth cult, they worship youth so much it's almost paranoid. And LA is the Mecca of it all; they're taking it to the hilt. — Billie Joe Armstrong

All of our faith and practice arise out of the drama of Scripture, the "big story" that traces the plot of history from creation to consummation, with Christ as its Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. And out of the throbbing verbs of this unfolding drama God reveals stable nouns - doctrines. From what God does in history we are taught certain things about who he is and what it means to be created in his image, fallen, and redeemed, renewed, and glorified in union with Christ. As the Father creates his church, in his Son and by his Spirit, we come to realize what this covenant community is and what it means to belong to it; what kind of future is promised to us in Christ, and how we are to live here and now in the light of it all. The drama and the doctrine provoke us to praise and worship - doxology - and together these three coordinates give us a new way of living in the world as disciples. — Michael S. Horton

Governments may change, and opinions, and the very appearance of lands themselves, but the slowest thing to change is religion. What has once been associated with worship becomes holy in itself, and self-perpetuating, always built upon the foundation of mingled awe and attraction which the unknown has for the mind of man. — Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth

There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship
be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles
is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. — David Foster Wallace

What is done unto people is also being done unto God — Sunday Adelaja

we must not miss the fact that Paul directly tells a local congregation to adapt its worship because nonbelievers will be present. It is a false dichotomy to insist we must choose between seeking to please God and being concerned with how unchurched people feel or what they might be thinking about during our worship services. — Timothy J. Keller

I think that when you consider the beauty of the world and you wonder how it came to be what it is, you are naturally overwhelmed with a feeling of awe, a feeling of admiration and you almost feel a desire to worship something. I feel this, I recognise that other scientists such as Carl Sagan feel this, Einstein felt it. We, all of us, share a kind of religious reverence for the beauties of the universe, for the complexity of life. For the sheer magnitude of the cosmos, the sheer magnitude of geological time. And it's tempting to translate that feeling of awe and worship into a desire to worship some particular thing, a person, an agent. You want to attribute it to a maker, to a creator. What science has now achieved is an emancipation from that impulse to attribute these things to a creator.
God Delusion debate Professor Richard Dawkins vs John Lennox — Richard Dawkins

There are valleys that lead to the bottom of the world, so it seems, but what world is that? The universe has no sides, no end, can't be mapped. Enough to make a man talk about God, make a man superstitious and worship an idol. The science never gets as far as the strangeness. The more sophisticated my equipment, the stranger the worlds it detects. I sometimes think I'm sailing through a vast thought. — Jeanette Winterson

Joseph dreamed the sun and moon were bowing down to worship him. Ten years
went by and that came to pass. The saying, 'He sees by God's light,' is not an idle
idiom. It means something. There is light that can shatter this earth-and-sky.
It cannot be seen with eyes. This vision sees only the next step, what's directly in front. — Rumi

The first sign of love is when love asks nothing, [when it] gives everything. This is the real spiritual worship, the worship through love. Whether God is merciful is no longer questioned. He is God; He is my love. Whether God is omnipotent and almighty, limited or unlimited, is no longer questioned. If He distributes good, all right; if He brings evil, what does it matter? All other attributes vanish except that one-infinite love. — Swami Vivekananda

Those who think that a woman detained at home by her little family is doing nothing, think the reverse of what is true. Scarcely can the godly mother quit her home for a place of worship; but dream not that she is lost to the work of the church; far from it, she is doing the best possible service for her Lord. Mothers, the godly training of your offspring is your first and most pressing duty. — Charles Spurgeon

This introduces a second reason why we must know who God is and what His name is: We were created to worship and glorify Him. — Warren W. Wiersbe

I asked participants who claimed to be "strong followers of Jesus" whether Jesus spent time with the poor. Nearly 80 percent said yes. Later in the survey, I sneaked in another question, I asked this same group of strong followers whether they spent time wit the poor, and less than 2 percent said they did. I learned a powerful lesson: We can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy of the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor. — Shane Claiborne

What good is all our busy religion if God isn't in it? What good is it if we've lost majesty, reverence, worship-an awareness of the divine? What good is it if we've lost a sense of the Presence and the ability to retreat within our own hearts and meet God in the garden? — Aiden Wilson Tozer