"Come Holy Spirit"
"Holy Spirit, You are welcome here"
"We invite Your presence"
"Come Lord"
There is a good chance you have either heard, or said, those phrases during a church or worship service at some point. You may even pray them on a regular basis. Also, there is a good chance that in both situations, you repeat them over and over again repeatedly.
While this is the "face of the modern worship" service, there might be a some items worth the noting.
"And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words." ~ Matthew 6:7
(We also see this verse "played out" in 1 Kings 18 with Elijah on Mount Carmel)
No where within the New Testament do we see this (sometimes bordering on extreme) repetition, other than being mentioned in the above as something to not do. Granted, the Matthew verse references prayer and the priests in 1 Kings are "praying" but are not those phrases we began with more akin to prayers than to worship?
Do me a favor and put down the stones for a few minutes anyway, ok?
Why do we "do" worship like this? Is it not because for someone - maybe you - God made His presence "known" (remember that word) during a service or prayer time that included those elements? So, obviously, we assume that if it worked once it will work again. Now stop for a moment and consider the absolute insanity of that line of thinking. That we - people - have somehow discovered the "magical / mystical" pattern to "make" God show up. My use of those terms for the pattern is no accident as doing so borders far closer to witchcraft spell casting than worship. That might rile you a bit but take a look at the worship we see elsewhere in the Bible, say in Isaiah 6:3 or Revelation 4:8 for example. Now compare that to the more "modern" repeating of set patterns in order to obtain the reaction that "we want" and you will see that the modern approach looks a bit more like what happened on Mt. Carmel than what we see being done in His presence in heaven.
There is another slight issue with our opening phrases. Simply put, where is God? Where "is" the Holy Spirit? I mean, we sing / pray for Him to come or that He is welcome to show up or whatever so, obviously, He must not be there. Which, again, is insanity at its' finest. Last time I checked, God was omnipresent - that means He is already there, whether you "feel" Him or not. And even if He were not, He hardly needs your permission to show up nor your personal invite. And just because you extend your personal invitation, does not mean He has to do anything - He's God, He can do what He wants.
Now then, I realize that there is some pretty touchy stuff here but I want you to know I am not - by any means - bashing worship or worship services or how you pray, etc. I do however, want you to consider the "why" of what you do. For if you organize worship music, for example, in such a way as to try and make God show up and do stuff that you want Him to do, then you are - in essence - doing the exact same thing those priests of Ba'al did in 1 Kings. You may try and justify that by saying you are talking to God not whoever they were looking for, but you are doing the same variety of action with the same variety of motive - to get something.
Just something you might want to ponder a bit.
*EDIT*
I have had things I have penned before taken out of context to support or condemn <whatever>. While I do try and be thorough, obviously I cannot control what someone else uses this (or other posts) to say. That said though, I want to reiterate that I am not condemning any modern worship service style or format any more than I would condemn a worshipper of my God.
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