Worship
Course:
The Higher Calling to Worship
Lesson
3
God is seen to be
'more present' when the body of Christ is anointed for worship.
When God is 'more present' in the temple of
His body then His nature and character will be manifested and His power will be
known. This is always the case in
revivals. A revival is when the Holy
Spirit takes control of the meetings, bringing an awareness of the holiness of
God, filling the believers with the love of God, and producing a godly fear of
the awesomeness of His presence. The
awareness of the holiness of God produces strong conviction of sin and
repentance in the congregation, but this will lead to great eventually
joyfulness. Revivals are always
characterised by these two things, repentance and joy.
Heavenly
chorus at Azusa
Singing is a wonderful way of being able to
express this joy. But sometimes the Holy
Spirit takes complete control of the singing.
There was a strange phenomena at the Azusa Street
revival in 1906 that
was called the 'heavenly chorus'. This
was the spontaneous singing, either solo or in unison, of a new song in the
Spirit. It was sometimes sung without
words, and at other times in unknown tongues.
The evidence that this was the Holy Spirit was that it a heavenly
atmosphere came upon the congregation and it seemed to them as though they
worshipped with the angels.
Burned
up the debt
The Pentecostal message spread rapidly
after the Azusa Street Revival. The
beginning of the movement in Great Britain is usually associated with the meetings held by A.A.Boddy
(1854-1930) at the All Saints Church in Sunderland, England
in 1907. He invited T.B.Barratt
(1862-1940) to come from Norway to
preach on the Baptism with the Holy Spirit.
At the time there was a large amount of money owing on the church hall,
but when the power of God was present the debt was cleared without an offering
being taken. An inscription was written
at the front of the building, 'When the fire of the Lord fell, it burned up the
debt'. The meetings continued after Barratt left and it was this move of God in Sunderland that brought Smith Wigglesworth (1859-1947) into the higher realm of worship.