What Does TRUE Worship Look Like?

“Apart from vital godliness all religion is utterly vain; offered without a sincere heart, every form of worship is a solemn sham and an impudent mockery of the majesty of heaven.” – C.H. Spurgeon

Back in the 1990s, our prison ministry softball team was scheduled to conduct a chapel service at the State Correctional Institution in Somerset, PA followed by an afternoon doubleheader. The chapel service was absolutely electric! God moved in a powerful way through the testimonies of our players and the gospel message brought by Rev. Larry Lilly, our first baseman who was also a prison chaplain in Delaware. Quite a few inmates made professions of faith in Jesus Christ and the ones who were already believers were greatly encouraged in their faith.

When it came time for us to head out to the softball field, a state-appointed chaplain entered the chapel to prepare for the Catholic service. We greeted him warmly, but he simply grunted and went about his business, which was to place a small cross, some statuettes, and other religious relics on the altar. It was clear that he didn’t like us infringing on “his turf” and he was even more annoyed that the chapel had been full for our service but was three-quarters empty for his. Truth be told, I pitied the man for being so bitter and especially for being so trapped in his religiosity.

If he had been there that day, here is what Charles Spurgeon would have said about the situation…

“The tearing of garments and other outward signs of religious emotion are easily displayed and are frequently hypocritical; but to feel true repentance is far more difficult, and consequently far less common. Men will pay attention to the most minute ceremonial regulations—for those things are pleasing to the flesh. But true faith is too humbling, too heart-searching, too thorough for the tastes of people of the flesh; they prefer something more ostentatious, flimsy, and worldly.”

“Outward observances are temporarily comfortable; eye and ear are pleased; self-conceit is fed, and self-righteousness is puffed up: But they are ultimately delusive, for in the face of death, and at the day of judgment, the soul needs something more substantial than ceremonies and rituals to lean upon. Apart from vital godliness all religion is utterly vain; offered without a sincere heart, every form of worship is a solemn sham and an impudent mockery of the majesty of heaven.”

“Heart-rending is divinely worked and solemnly felt. It is a secret grief that is personally experienced, not in mere form, but as a deep, soul-moving work of the Holy Spirit upon the inmost heart of each believer. It is not a matter to be merely talked about and believed in, but keenly and sensitively felt in every living child of the living God. It is powerfully humiliating and completely sin-purging, but it is also sweet preparation for the gracious consolations that proud, unhumbled spirits are unable to receive; and it is distinctly discriminating, for it belongs to the elect of God, and to them alone.”

“But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.” John 4:23 (NKJV)

- Rev. Dale M. Glading, President