At Heartland, worshiping God is our highest priority, because our lives are unavoidably shaped by who or what we worship. We believe that when the church gathers to worship, there’s a lot more going on than just a group of people singing songs together. In worship, we experience God together. We believe that God is present with his people, and in worship we are actually with Him. As we express thanks, adoration, love, commitment, and devotion to Him, we are “drawing near” to God, and we believe that God himself is also drawing near to us (James 4:8; Hebrews 4:16, 10:22).
Because we believe that God is alive and well, and in a good mood, we believe he communicates with us today. So we practice listening to God (not as spooky as it sounds) as well as speaking and singing to him. We value conversational worship, where we respond to God’s “voice” and move with the rhythms of God’s Spirit (again, not as spooky as it might sound). Most of the time this conversation is expressed in song, but we’ve also seen it painted, danced, enacted, and declared.
But the experience of God extends far beyond our gatherings. God inhabits the air around us, and indeed dwells within us, and He is constantly present and at work in the world. We believe that wherever we go, God is already there. So try as we might, we can’t leave God’s presence when we leave a gathering. We want our experience of God to expand to encompass and drench every aspect of our lives, so that in every conversation, every task, every relationship, every moment we are conscious of and listening to the presence of God with us.
At some time in the future, God will complete his mission of renewing creation, of “making all things new.” Then will be fulfilled what the ancient Scripture says:
“Behold the dwelling place of God is with humankind. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:3-4)
When we gather to worship, experiencing the presence of God together as his people, and as we learn to become aware of his presence with us every day, we are declaring and enacting God’s future in the present. As we experience God in small and big ways in our everyday lives and our larger gatherings, we are experiencing a little bit of our glorious future ahead of time.
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