Only More So

There is always the suspicion that creeps into discussions of this kind, a niggling worry that the call to worship God is rather like the order that goes out from the dictator whose subjects may not like him but have learned to fear him. You want hundred thousand people to line the route for his birthday parade? Very well, he shall have them, and they will all be cheering and waving as if their lives depended on it–because, in fact, they do. Turn away in boredom, or don’t turn up at all, and it will be the worse for you. If it has crossed your mind that worshipping the true God is like that, let me offer you a very different model. . . . I am been in the audience for some great performances that moved me and fed me and satisfied me richly. But only two or three times in my life have I been in an audience which, the moment the conductor’s baton came down the last time, leaped to its feet in electrified excitement, unable to contain its enthusiastic delight and wonder at what it has just experienced. That sort of response is pretty close to genuine worship. Something like that, but more so, is the mood of Revelation 4 and 5. That is what, when we come to worship the living God, we are being invited to join in. —N.T. Wright, Simply Christian, 147