Lessons in Worship from a 24/7 Prayer Room

As Melissa and I continue to explore this new worship ministry God has led us into, we're coming to realise how much our understanding and passion for worship has been shaped by our experiences working in Houses of Prayer. The environment of a 24/7 Prayer Room is unlike anything else - especially the more familiar type of church gathering we're used to here in the UK - and has taught us lessons we've not learnt anywhere else. So, as part of of our aim to equip and disciple people in worship, I thought now was a good time to write about what we learnt and are still learning.

Worship is not about me

The first thing we learnt as we started working in Houses of Prayer is that the worship in that kind of setting makes no allowance for your own priorities. You don't visit a House of Prayer so that God can to minister to you - you go there to minister to Him, just as the Levites did day and night in the tabernacle of David (1 Chronicles 9:33). Contrast this to our regular church gatherings, where far too often our greatest concern throughout the service is not what we can give to God, but what God can give to us. We judge a worship time by what it did for us, despite the fact that the worship was not for us. Without even realising it, in the very times we've set aside for the sole purpose of telling God how much He means to us, we end up ascribing more worth and value to ourselves than to Him.

As we adjusted to the 24/7 House of Prayer model, Melissa and I found the worship was most draining when our sole concern was our own wants and needs - whether we liked the songs, whether we knew all the songs, how good the singers were, whether we could hit all the high notes, and how God was going to answer the prayer request I made that morning. We even found, when leading worship, that the many 'me-focussed' songs in our repertoire would get very uninspiring very quickly, in contrast to simple songs about God's holiness that would keep us lost in worship for hours. We found that the more we laid down our own agendas and took our eyes off of ourselves, the more enjoyable, refreshing and life-giving the worship would become. Funnily enough, we learnt that worship is actually easiest and most engaging when our sole focus is worshipping God.

Worship is more than songs

Another thing we learned is that songs in and of themselves do not equate to worship. The reality is, anyone can sing worship songs - Christians, atheists and people from other religions alike. Simply singing a worship song does not mean you're worshipping. Paul himself said in 1 Corinthians 13:1, "If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal." The meaning of the words is not in the words, but in how and why we sing them.

This is challenging, because most of the time, if we're honest, it's all too easy to sing worship songs on autopilot, especially when they're songs we've done hundreds of times before. We can be distracted by thoughts of what's for dinner, what we need to do at work next week, "Ooh I must reply to that person who texted me yesterday", and before we know it the song has finished and we haven't registered a single word that we've just sung. When Melissa and I did the Nightwatch at IHOPKC - spending six continuous hours in the Prayer Room from midnight to 6am - we would sometimes be shocked to realise at the end that we'd spent six hours singing and praying and not given God a single thought. Simply singing songs does not mean we're worshipping, which brings me nicely onto my next point.

Worship is Spirit-led

Jesus said in John 4:23-24 that the kind of worshippers God is looking for are those who "will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth", for "God is Spirit". In other words, we can only worship God if we know what God is like, and we can only know what God is like through the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who breathes life on the words we sing and reveals God to us, which is why in Prayer Rooms, and many other contemporary worship settings, there is now such an emphasis on spontaneous and 'prophetic' songs. Not because the songs we sing aren't any good, but because there is a recognition that we need to hear the Holy Spirit's voice in order to worship, and sometimes He says things that we don't have songs for. Hence the need for songs birthed 'in-the-moment' that convey a truth about God that the Holy Spirit is revealing, in a way we can all join in.

Though stepping into worship in this way can at first feel quite daunting - especially when you're leading - it's actually the most liberating thing to take hold of. When you realise there is someone else leading the worship who knows God far better than you, following their lead is the most natural thing to do. It is the Holy Spirit's desire to reveal more of God to us - especially so in our worship times - and if we let Him, He will take us to places we've never been before. True worship is Spirit-led, so let's be intentional to invite Him to lead us in our worship times.

Worship is where prayer is birthed

A strange phenomenon we also encountered when working in 24/7 Houses of Prayer was being immersed in such deep times of worship that suddenly all we wanted to do was pray. We'd be singing songs about God's worth, or His beauty, and without warning find ourselves desperately praying for His worth and beauty to revealed to others. We also encountered moments where a worship set would feel unfinished and incomplete, yet we didn't feel ready to transition to the next set of songs. Slowly we started to realise that in those times God was birthing prayer and intercession in us, and it was only after giving time to release these prayers that we'd feel ready to move on.

We see this reality constantly being played out in the Book of Revelation, where the worship around the throne (Revelation 4:8) constantly leads to prayers that God would receive all the honour He is due (Revelation 4:11). If we want to get better at praying, let's first seek to get better at worshipping, because the greater revelation we have of God's worth, the more fervently we will pray for His Name to be known.

Worship is what we were made for

Finally, King David famously wrote in Psalm 84:10, "Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere." He discovered such joy and delight in worship that he would happily have scorned every other earthly pleasure just for one more day in God's presence. And right here is the heart of worship.

Worship can be challenging - whether you're singing for five minutes or for five hours - but the truth is, it is only challenging because we dwell in bodies that are sinful and dying. The problem is not that worship is boring, or that singing is boring, or that God is boring; the problem is that we live in perishable bodies that get tired, distracted, achey and sore. When we get to heaven, it will be our greatest joy to sing songs of worship to God, because when we die we will be set free from our mortal bodies and everything in us that doesn't enjoy worship. During our long stints in the Prayer Room, as we pushed past our own fleshly tiredness and boredom, we started to discover a greater and deeper enjoyment in worship than we'd ever known. Many years on, I'm still praying for God to teach me more of this truth. Worship is enjoyable, whether or not I'm enjoying it, and this truth keeps me hungry and focussed in worship times even when there are many other things I would rather be doing.

Simply put, worship is what we were made for.