God does not always manifest Himself by dramatic miracles. But whatever way He shows Himself, heaven comes down and glory touches our soul! Seeking God in real interaction is, therefore, central to worship.

But I see a deadly trend surfacing. It is the age-old tendency to substitute show for heart, formulas for faith, and form for power. In some places a program of worship is subtly replacing the pursuit of God's manifest presence!

It's partly a matter of attitude. It's a shift toward viewing the service as a collection of activities such as singing, preaching, scripture lessons, prayer, the offering, and so on. The "program" mentality is basically satisfied if these are done with reasonable care within a specified time frame.

When worship has become a program it often lapses into boring routine. Or if there are changes, they smack of contrived innovation in a futile attempt to mimic the creativity of the Spirit. The changes are unnatural and do not make Jesus seem any closer.

Nor does insisting on spontaneity solve the problem. Some of the most powerful services I have attended have been carefully pre-planned, while others, seeking to be spontaneous, were mere exhibitions of free-flowing flesh. The issue is listening to the Spirit and doing in the service what He wants. He may reveal some of that prior to the service, and some of it while the service is in progress.

When people touch God, there is a freshness to the services. The variations from one time to the next fulfill God's aim for each service. They seem natural and take away hindrances to worship. They reflect God's desire to bless His people. When people touch God, not only believers think He is present; but unbeliever may also see Him and fall on their faces in awe (I Corinthians 14:25).

For a moment I was tempted to give him some generic advice: "Christians should not go by feelings. Worship God anyway. He is worthy of it."

While that would have been a biblically based answer, it would also have been too easy. It would have been too superficial to meet the heart cry of this earnest person. It would have failed honestly to address the difficutly of worshiping an "absent God."

Indeed, I believe God would have been disappointed with such an answer. We should not canonize the status quo with such a word. It would have been a smug, Laodicean retort, implying that we had plumbed the depths and ascended the heights of all there is to learn about worship. But it would have missed God's purpose. Jesus did not die so we could conduct religious exercises in memory of His great sacrifice. He suffered, died and rose again so He could bring us into unhindered fellowship with the Father, the Spirit, and Himself. That's why Scripture can command us to "come boldly to the throne of grace" and to "draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith" (Hebrews 4:16, 10:22). And that's what we must do during worship.

To answer that man's earnest question with a cliche would reduce our experience of God to that experienced by nominal Christians. Though they don't really know Him, they do live in God's sovereign presence. Yet sadly, they worship God from afar.

"The person who has My commands and keeps them is the one who [really] loves Me, and whoever [really] loves Me will be loved by My Father. And I [too] will love him and will show (reveal, manifest) Myself to him - I will let Myself be clearly seen by him and make Myself real to him" (John 14:21, Amplified).