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Revelation 4:10-11:
10The four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying,
11Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.
Prayer and worship are not the same.
You feel this at once when you consider the distinction between religion in heaven and religion on earth.
On earth we are in the midst of all sorts of trouble and misery, we endure a thousand anxieties, we contend against disappointment and adversity, and our life each day is an endless chain of wants that call for supplies.
This is a condition which of itself impels us to prayer, to ask, to supplicate, to invoke, and implore help and deliverance, relief and the fulfillment of our desires.
In religion on earth prayer, supplication, the invocation of higher help is altogether appropriate.
But this is wholly different in heaven.
Undoubtedly there is prayer in heaven, even much prayer. Christ Himself lives to pray for us.
But prayer in heaven, both on the part of Christ, and of the angels, and of the blest, bears another character than that of our prayer on earth.
"Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," can also be prayed above. The kingdom of glory tarries. The conflict between Christ and the power that sets itself against God goes on. The end has not come yet. And therefore it is natural that everything that is in heaven invokes this end and implores the fruition of the kingdom of glory.
It can also be understood that prayer in heaven is in behalf of God's people on earth. The Scriptures teach this plainly with respect to Christ. That angels remember us in their supplication is quite certain. And that the blessed ones themselves, though they have no immediate knowledge of our needs, unite with Christ and the angels in prayer for the triumph of God's kingdom in the earth can scarcely be thought otherwise.
But though you go into this as far as Scripture will permit, yet it speaks for itself that neither the angels nor the blessed can pray with us: "Give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our debts and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the Evil."
The blessed may pray that they might be clothed with the body of the resurrection, but their condition is not one of need, of misery, of lack and want. They are happy and drink with full draughts from the Fountain of bliss.
Where we are permitted a look upon the life in heaven, as in Revelation, you find almost no mention of anything regarding angels, seraphs and cherubim and of the blessed, than that they worship.
"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory."
If, then, there is this difference between religion above and religion on earth, that among us prayer, and in heaven worship appears in the foreground, it is of utmost importance that we carefully consider the character of this worship.
Prayer is the seeking of God's nearness, in our behalf, that He might be gracious unto us. Worship is the seeking of God's nearness, from our side in order that we may offer laud, praise, thanksgiving and honor unto God.
In principle, therefore, the one is the direct opposite of the other.
He who prays asks that God may give Himself to us; he who worships demands that his soul and all that is within him shall offer itself unto God.
He who prays desires something that might come to us from God, he who worships desires something that might come unto God from us.
That in worship, also, grace operates, speaks of itself, but it is another kind of grace. It is grace, that the Infinite, Almighty and self-sufficient God will accept the magnifying of His Name from the creature.
He is so infinitely exalted that the creature cannot bring Him anything, and though every angel-voice and human tongue were silent forevermore, the Eternal One would need nothing, and remain all-sufficient in Himself.
And herein is grace, that the most High God, Who needs nothing, will take pleasure in the songs of praise of His angels and of men, and allow them the sacred joy of showing forth His praise.
All worship, all thanksgiving, all songs of praise, all ascription of honor, rests upon the foundation of this, to us, impenetrable grace.
Thus worship and ascription of honor can truly likewise serve to magnify God's Name before our fellow-creatures, but at least in worship this is not the aim.
He who sings Divine praise can do so for the sake of witnessing for his God in the face of unbelieving multitudes, and of winning them for God, but worship is a holy utterance of soul, which goes on between our soul and God, and at the most can only adapt itself to the worship of fellow-believers.
Worship in its highest utterance cannot be mechanical. It only becomes worship when the soul loses itself in God, in admiration becomes astonished at His virtues and His acts, and of itself breaks forth into praise even as the Aeolian harp emits its dulcet strains when the wind plays upon its strings.
Examine now your own inner life, not whether you pray more than you worship, but whether in your outpouring of soul, next to prayer, worship, likewise, has its own, sufficient place.
And then, alas, it must be an honest avowal on the part of many that in the prayer-life this worship forms all too moderate a part. We do not say that most people do not worship as well as pray, but we dare express the surmise that the blessed delight of worship is, by all too many, too little known and sought.
And this should not be so.
He who seeks the hidden walk, who wills to be near unto God, should not in his prayer-life be too exclusively engaged about himself nor about those who are his, and when he is on his knees before God he should not defer to concern himself about God's glory until the end of his prayer.
The knowledge of God lies in worship, far more than in prayer.
He who prays for something thinks, first of all, of his own need and want and embarrassment, and loses himself in the Being of his God no further than that with Him there is power and might wherewith He can come to the help of his suppliant's need.
On the other hand, he who worships loses himself in God, forgets himself, in order to think of God alone, to let the lustrous beams of God's virtues shine upon him, and to cause to radiate forth from his own soul the reflex of the greatness of God as it mirrors itself in his deeply moved and wonder-wrapped soul.
Only when the kingdom of Glory shall have been ushered in on the new earth under the new heaven together with all God's angels, shall we not do otherwise than worship. At present, need presses prayer continuously to the lips. And yet, woe to him, woe to her, who does not already here know something of that real life which finds its blessedness in worship.
Let thanksgiving be here your training school.
One of the formularies of the Church makes the whole life of God's child consist of a testimony of gratitude, for thanksgiving is the beginning and the continuance of all worship.
Who would not daily pray for the forgiveness of his sins? But it is deplorable when ardent thanksgiving for forgiveness obtained at the Cross remains lacking, or at least does not fill our soul.
So it is with all of life.
There is always need and want, and the pressure of soul from the depths, to call upon God that He might be gracious unto us.
But is there ever a moment of prayer when there is no occasion as well to give thanks for grace obtained and to honor Him Who gave it?
Thanksgiving is not yet the full worship. Giving thanks is only just worship with an eye to what God was to us. But he who has learned to give thanks, real, ardent thanks, comes of himself to this still far richer worship, which wills nothing else than to glorify God's Majesty.
With the heathen, at times, there is more worship before their idols than one finds with us before the Holy One. The Mohammedan, indeed, daily recites the virtues of Allah from the Koran.
Is, then, the admonition superfluous, that from the very first we shall accustom our children not only to prayer but also to giving of thanks and to worship?
Nothing brings our soul near unto God so effectively as worship.
* * * * * * *This devotional classic offers 110 meditations on a single thought from Psalm 73: "As for me, it is good to be near to God." The author states, "The fellowship of being near unto God must become reality ... it must permeate and give color to our feeling, our perceptions, our sensations, our thinking, our imagining, our willing, our acting, our speaking. It must not stand as a foreign factor in our life, but it must be the passion that breathes throughout our whole existence."
The meditations reflect the blending of spiritual vigor with doctrinal loyalty so consistently expressed in the life of Abraham Kuyper. These are devotions with true substance, avoiding the extremes about which Kuyper adds a word of caution: "Stress in creedal confession, without drinking from the Living Fountain, runs dry in barren orthodoxy, just as truly as spiritual emotion, without clearness in confessional standards, makes one sink in the bog of sickly mysticism."
Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a Dutch political leader and Calvinist theologian. Elected to parliament in 1874, he became Prime Minister in 1901 and served in that capacity until 1905. As a theologian, he revived a systematic, orthodox Calvinism. He founded the Free Reformed Church and the Free University of Amsterdam. His other works include Principles of Sacred Theology, Lectures on Calvinism, and The Work of the Holy Spirit
Further information about Abraham Kuyper's life can be seen in the translator's "Biographical Note"; further information about To Be Near Unto God can be Abraham Kuyper's "Preface" to that book.
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