148 Inspiring Worship Quotes

In a world filled with distractions and noise, finding moments of peace and inspiration can sometimes feel like a challenge. Whether you're seeking solace, motivation, or a deeper connection to your faith, worship quotes have the power to uplift your spirit and renew your perspective. We've compiled a curated collection of the top 148 inspiring worship quotes to guide your spiritual journey. These words from esteemed speakers, authors, and leaders are more than just quotes—they're reminders of the divine presence in our everyday lives. Join us as we explore these powerful messages, each one a beacon of hope and a testament to the enduring strength of faith.

1. “The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.” - Edward Gibbon

2. “Our great mistake in education is, as it seems to me, the worship of book-learning–the confusion of instruction and education. We strain the memory instead of cultivating the mind. The children in our elementary schools are wearied by the mechanical act of writing, and the interminable intricacies of spelling; they are oppressed by columns of dates, by lists of kings and places, which convey no definite idea to their minds, and have no near relation to their daily wants and occupations; while in our public schools the same unfortunate results are produced by the weary monotony of Latin and Greek grammar. We ought to follow exactly the opposite course with children–to give them a wholesome variety of mental food, and endeavor to cultivate their tastes, rather than to fill their minds with dry facts. The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn. What does it matter if the pupil know a little more or a little less? A boy who leaves school knowing much, but hating his lessons, will soon have forgotten almost all he ever learned; while another who had acquired a thirst for knowledge, even if he had learned little, would soon teach himself more than the first ever knew.” - John Lubbock

3. “Woman is sacred; the woman one loves is holy.” - Alexandre Dumas

4. “If God existed (a question concerning which Jubal maintained a meticulous intellectual neutrality) and if He desired to be worshiped (a proposition which Jubal found inherently improbable but conceivably possible in the dim light of his own ignorance), then (stipulating affirmatively both the above) it nevertheless seemed wildly unlikely to Jubal to the point of reductio ad absurdum that a God potent to shape galaxies would be titillated and swayed by the whoop-te-do nonsense the Fosterites offered Him as "worship.” - Robert A. Heinlein

5. “The Seven Social Sins are: Wealth without work. Pleasure without conscience. Knowledge without character. Commerce without morality. Science without humanity. Worship without sacrifice. Politics without principle.From a sermon given by Frederick Lewis Donaldson in Westminster Abbey, London, on March 20, 1925.” - Frederick Lewis Donaldson

6. “God's revelation... unmasks our illusions about ourselves. It exposes our pride, our individualism, our self-centeredness - in short, our sin. But worship also offers forgiveness, healing, transformation, motivation, and courage to work in the world for God's justice and peace - in short, salvation in its largest sense.” - Marva J. Dawn

7. “...we are to be lights in the world. It is God's business to light us, to set us on the lampstand, and to bring the people into the house. Our only duty is to shine forth with the gospel.” - Marva J. Dawn

8. “To hate man and worship God seems to be the sum of all the creeds.” - Robert Ingersoll

9. “Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery. It is far better to be free, to leave the forts and barricades of fear, to stand erect and face the future with a smile. It is far better to give yourself sometimes to negligence, to drift with wave and tide, with the blind force of the world, to think and dream, to forget the chains and limitations of the breathing life, to forget purpose and object, to lounge in the picture gallery of the brain, to feel once more the clasps and kisses of the past, to bring life's morning back, to see again the forms and faces of the dead, to paint fair pictures for the coming years, to forget all Gods, their promises and threats, to feel within your veins life's joyous stream and hear the martial music, the rhythmic beating of your fearless heart. And then to rouse yourself to do all useful things, to reach with thought and deed the ideal in your brain, to give your fancies wing, that they, like chemist bees, may find art's nectar in the weeds of common things, to look with trained and steady eyes for facts, to find the subtle threads that join the distant with the now, to increase knowledge, to take burdens from the weak, to develop the brain, to defend the right, to make a palace for the soul. This is real religion. This is real worship” - Robert Green Ingersoll

10. “Human beings by their very nature are worshipers. Worship is not something we do; it defines who we are. You cannot divide human beings into those who worship and those who don’t. Everybody worships; it’s just a matter of what, or whom, we serve.” - Paul David Tripp

11. “I've begun worshipping the sun for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike some other gods I could mention, I can see the sun. It's there for me every day. And the things it brings me are quite apparent all the time: heat, light, food, and a lovely day. There's no mystery, no one asks for money, I don't have to dress up, and there's no boring pageantry. And interestingly enough, I have found that the prayers I offer to the sun and the prayers I formerly offered to 'God' are all answered at about the same 50% rate.” - George Carlin

12. “When every hope is gone, 'when helpers fail and comforts flee,' I find that help arrives somehow, from I know not where. Supplication, worship, prayer are no superstition; they are acts more real than the acts of eating, drinking, sitting or walking. It is no exaggeration to say that they alone are real, all else is unreal.” - Mahatma Gandhi

13. “Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.” - David Foster Wallace

14. “It is Satan's constant effort to misrepresent the character of God, the nature of sin, and the real issues at stake in the great controversy. His sophistry lessens the obligation of the divine law and gives men license to sin. At the same time he causes them to cherish false conceptions of God so that they regard Him with fear and hate rather than with love. The cruelty inherent in his own character is attributed to the Creator; it is embodied in systems of religion and expressed in modes of worship.” - Ellen G. White

15. “Worship is not love.” - Donald Hall

16. “Heathen, n. A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something he can see and feel.” - Ambrose Bierce

17. “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.” - Anonymous

18. “Who will deny that true religion consists, in a great measure, in vigorous and lively actings of the inclination and will of the soul, or the fervent exercises of the heart? That religion which God requires, and will accept, does not consist in weak, dull, and lifeless, wishes, raising us but a little above a state of indifference. ” - Jonathan Edwards

19. “It does not answer the aim which God had in this institution, merely for men to have good commentaries and expositions on the Scripture, and other good books of divinity; because, although these may tend, as well as preaching, to give a good doctrinal or speculative understanding of the word of God, yet they have not an equal tendency to impress them on men's hearts and affections. God hath appointed a particular and lively application of his word, in the preaching of it, as a fit means to affect sinners with the importance of religion, their own misery, the necessity of a remedy, and the glory and sufficiency of a remedy provided; to stir up the pure minds of the saints, quicken their affections by often bringing the great things of religion in their remembrance, and setting them in their proper colours, though they know them, and have been fully instructed in them already. ” - Jonathan Edwards

20. “The more you pray, the less you'll panic. The more you worship, the less you worry. You'll feel more patient and less pressured.” - Rick Warren

21. “If there is no laughter, Jesus has gone somewhere else. If there is no joy and freedom, it is not a church: it is simply a crowd of melancholy people basking in a religious neurosis. If there is no celebration, there is no real worship.” - Steve Brown

22. “(Life) it was a little bit nearer than God, but no less powerful and terrible. Yes, it was something, perhaps, that one did not wish to understand because one feared it, something to which one paid tribute lest it should feel offended and seize one, body and soul.” - Arthur Holitscher

23. “God created us for this: to live our lives in a way that makes him look more like the greatness and the beauty and the infinite worth that he really is. This is what it means to be created in the image of God.” - John Piper

24. “It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession. Now that I have made it, something seems to have gone out of me. Perhaps one should never put one's worship into words.” - Oscar Wilde

25. “Her faith in a loving and forgiving God is strong, but she worships laughter.” - Miriam Toews

26. “In the desert, the only god is a well.” - Vera Nazarian

27. “Too fair to worship, too divine to love.” - Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

28. “In all ages the people have honored those who dishonored them. They have worshiped their destroyers; they have canonized the most gigantic liars, and buried the great thieves in marble and gold. Under the loftiest monuments sleeps the dust of murder.” - Robert G. Ingersoll

29. “With their backs to the sunrise they worship the night.” - Robert G. Ingersoll

30. “The surpluses will have to be expended somehow, and trust the oligarchs to find a way. Magnificent roads will be built. There will be great achievements in science, and especially in art. When the oligarchs have completely mastered the people, they will have time to spare for other things. They will become worshippers of beauty. They will become art-lovers. And under their direction and generously rewarded, will toil the artists. The result will be great art; for no longer, as up to yesterday, will the artists pander to the bourgeois taste of the middle class. It will be great art, I tell you, and wonder cities will arise that will make tawdry and cheap the cities of old time. And in these cities will the oligarchs dwell and worship beauty” - Jack London

31. “We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. And this has been based on the even flimsier assumption that we could know with any certainty what was good even for us. We have fulfilled the danger of this by making our personal pride and greed the standard of our behavior toward the world - to the incalculable disadvantage of the world and every living thing in it. And now, perhaps very close to too late, our great error has become clear. It is not only our own creativity - our own capacity for life - that is stifled by our arrogant assumption; the creation itself is stifled.We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and to learn what is good for it. We must learn to cooperate in its processes, and to yield to its limits. But even more important, we must learn to acknowledge that the creation is full of mystery; we will never entirely understand it. We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe. We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For I do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it. (pg. 20, "A Native Hill")” - Wendell Berry

32. “Time and again I hear how important the darker environment is to those at our vintage-faith worship gathering. Attenders feel they can freely pray in a corner by themselves without feeling that everyone is staring at them.” - Dan Kimball

33. “[I]n a place with absolutely no private or personal life, with the incessant worship of a mediocre career-sadist as the only culture, where all citizens are the permanent property of the state, the highest form of pointlessness has been achieved.” - Christopher Hitchens

34. “The glory of God is the living man, but the life of man is the vision of God', says St. Irenaeus, getting to the heart of what happens when man meets God on the mountain in the wilderness. Ultimately, it is the very life of man, man himself as living righteously, that is the true worship of God, but life only becomes real life when it receives its form from looking toward God.” - Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger)

35. “Worship is the proper response of all moral, sentient beings to God, ascribing all honor and worth to their Creator-God precisely because he is worthy, delightfully so.” - D.A. Carson

36. “Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, but worship is the greatest form of adoration.” - Jayce O'Neal

37. “The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

38. “Next to the Word of God, music deserves the highest praise. The gift of language combined with the gift of song was given to man that he should proclaim the Word of God through Music.” - Martin Luther

39. “Many Spirit-filled authors have exhausted the thesaurus in order to describe God with the glory He deserves. His perfect holiness, by definition, assures us that our words can't contain Him. Isn't it a comfort to worship a God we cannot exaggerate?” - Francis Chan

40. “Sometimes I go to God and say, "God, if Thou dost never answer another prayer while I live on this earth, I will still worship Thee as long as I live and in the ages to come for what Thou hast done already. God’s already put me so far in debt that if I were to live one million millenniums I couldn’t pay Him for what He’s done for me.” - A.W. Tozer

41. “I can safely say, on the authority of all that is revealed in the Word of God, that any man or woman on this earth who is bored and turned off by worship is not ready for heaven.” - A.W. Tozer

42. “The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the sun, in which they put a man called Christ in the place of the sun, and pay him the adoration originally payed to the sun.” - Thomas Paine

43. “Be formless. As long as your "I" is asserted, it will be an idol of worship” - AainaA-Ridtz A R

44. “There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship--be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles--is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.” - David Foster Wallace

45. “You haven’t prepared yourself for worship if you just practice musical art” - LaMar Boschman

46. “It’s not the art, it’s the heart. What [God] reads during our worship is the inner attitude. Worship is spiritual; it’s organic; it’s relational.” - LaMar Boschman

47. “We might be wise to follow the insight of the enraptured heart rather than the more cautious reasoning of the theological mind.” - A. W. Tozer

48. “It is precisely that requirement of shared worship that has been the principal source of suffering for individual man and the human race since the beginning of history. In their efforts to impose universal worship, men have unsheathed their swords and killed one another. They have invented gods and challenged each other: "Discard your gods and worship mine or I will destroy both your gods and you!” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

49. “Adoration is a sign of an infant civilization.” - Toba Beta

50. “The library is not a shrine for the worship of books. It is not a temple where literary incense must be burned or where one's devotion to the bound book is expressed in ritual. A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life.— Cited in ALA Bulletin, Oct. 1954, p.475” - Norman Cousins

51. “I often see how you sob over what you destroy, how you want to stop and just worship; and you do stop, and then a moment later you are at it again with a knife, like a surgeon. ” - Anais Nin

52. “Those who set up a fictitious worship, merely worship and adore their own delirious fancies; indeed, they would never dare so to trifle with God, had they not previously fashioned him after their own childish conceits.” - John Calvin

53. “Nothing teaches us about the preciousness of the Creator as much as when we learn the emptiness of everything else.” - Charles Spurgeon

54. “And don't waste time worshipping Harmony. Doing good was the worship.” - Brandon Sanderson

55. “Every source of blessing is a point of attack.” - David McGee

56. “To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.” - William Temple

57. “If money’s the god people worship, I’d rather go worship the devil instead.” - Jess C. Scott

58. “No Temple made by mortal human hands can ever compare to the Temple made by the gods themselves. That building of wood and stone that houses us and that many believe conceals the great Secret Temple from prying eyes, somewhere in its heart of hearts, is but a decoy for the masses who need this simple concrete limited thing in their lives. The real Temple is the whole world, and there is nothing as divinely blessed as a blooming growing garden.” - Vera Nazarian

59. “Nobody wants to worship you if you have the same problems, the same bad breath and messy hair and hangnails, as a regular person. You have to be everything regular people aren’t. Where they fail, you have to go all the way. Be what people are too afraid to be. Become whom they admire. People shopping for a messiah want quality. Nobody is going to follow a loser. When it comes to choosing a savior, they won't settle for just a human being.” - Chuck Palahniuk

60. “When we lift our hands in praise and worship, we break spiritual jars of perfume over Jesus. The fragrance of our praise fills the whole earth and touches the heart of God.” - dennis ignatius

61. “Without art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without science, we should always worship false gods.” - W.H. Auden

62. “Worship leader George Beverly Shea kidded Billy Graham that the latter would be unemployed in Heaven -- while Shea would still have a job leading worship.” - Billy Graham

63. “In the Name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful. All the praises and thanks be to Allah, the Lord of the 'Alamin (mankind, jinns and all that exists). The Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful. The Only Owner of the Day of Recompense (i.e. the Day of Resurrection) You (Alone) we worship, and You (Alone) we ask for help. Guide us to the Straight Way... The Way of those on whom You have bestowed Your Grace, not (the way) of those who earned Your Anger, nor of those who went astray.(The Qur'an- Surah Al-Fatihah)” - Anonymous

64. “Eat of my deep earth, drink of my living streams, for I am your Mother. Your heart is my wild drum, your breath my eternal song. If you would live, dance with me!” - Juliet Marillier

65. “I don't think God wants to be worshiped. I think the only pure worship of God is by loving one another, and I think all other forms of worship became a substitute for the love that we should show one another.” - Charles M. Schulz

66. “He’s an indulgent sort of man……With a quick lip and a fierce tongue, the sort of tongue that draws you in with charm and words of praise, awkward silences and desperate worships.” - Jamie Weise

67. “the very last thing I want to do is to unsettle in the mind of any Christian, whatever his denomination, the concepts -- for him traditional -- by which he finds it profitable to represent to himself what is happening when he receives the bread and wine. I could wish that no definitions had ever been felt to be necessary; and, still more, that none had been allowed to make divisions between churches.” - C.S. Lewis

68. “When we dedicate our talent to serving a neighbor, it is possibly one of the highest forms of worship; something sacred transpires when we sacrifice our time and dedicate our God-given loves and talents to one another.” - Matt Litton

69. “God's relationship with man does not work in a way in which man stumbles and then God has to drop what he is doing in order to lift him up; rather, man stumbles so that God can lift him up. Hence it is utterly impossible to truly diminish his glory.” - Criss Jami

70. “You never go away from us, yet we have difficulty in returning to You. Come, Lord, stir us up and call us back. Kindle and seize us. Be our fire and our sweetness. Let us love. Let us run.” - St. Augustine of Hippo

71. “No more is your master a god, Nobility, but he wants offerings from all. When Black God claims us, who will be punished for giving worship and power to a false god? The prince? Or Banjiku?” - Tamora Pierce

72. “The immoral woman in Luke 7 has the faith to anticipate Christ's forgiveness. She can act in love with no words to justify.” - Jenn Thoman

73. “... researchers argue that it's of utmost importance to unravel the nature of black holes, lest we someday begin to worship them. Sounds ridiculous, but whole segments of humankind have often revered the unknowable, venerating that which cannot be tested experimentally. Come to think of it, many still do in twenty-first-century society.” - Eric Chaisson

74. “Oh thrice fools are we who like new-born princes weeping in the cradle know not that there is a kingdom before them then let our Lord's sweet hand square us and hammer us and strike off the knots of pride self-love and world-worship and infidelity that He may make us stones and pillars in His Father's house.” - Samuel Rutherford

75. “Under the leadership of religious professionals, modern worship has become passive—listening to a message and singing some songs. Seldom is there a call to service or an invitation to trust Christ. Baptisms take place inside the church where it is safe and comfortable rather than in public where there is opportunity to give witness to the saving grace of Christ. The great needs of society are left to para-church groups, government agencies, and other social service organizations. All the while the church is losing its muscle tone, its biceps are becoming loose and flabby and its belly is becoming round and soft. Not a pretty picture for one who once was toned and buff—a lean, mean fighting machine.” - Craig Olson

76. “The root of all virtue and grace, of all faith and acceptable worship, is that we know that we have nothing but what we receive, and bow in deepest humility to wait upon God for it.” - Andrew Murray

77. “Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped.” - Calvin Coolidge

78. “That is what worship is all about. It is the glad shout of praise that arises to God the creator and God the rescuer from the creation that recognizes its maker, the creation that acknowledges the triumph of Jesus the Lamb. That is the worship that is going on in heaven, in God's dimension, all the time. The question we ought to be asking is how best we might join in.” - N.T. Wright

79. “A suburban pastor maintained services appropriate for his respected, professional parish. His father, an excitable traveling evangelist, visited and challenged the congregation to confront pride and sing out loudly with the windows open. The next day, the pastor’s banker mentioned overhearing, and he was sheepish. The buttoned-up banker said, though, that the neighborhood had been WAITING TO HEAR the church live out the joy they claimed.” - David Wilkerson

80. “You will never cease to be the most amazed person on earth at what God has done for you on the inside.” - Oswald Chambers

81. “Mum had a Charles-and-Diana wedding mug that had survived longer than the marriage itself. Mum had worshipped Princess Di and frequently lamented her passing. "Gone," she would say, shaking her head in disbelief. "Just like that. All that exercise for nothing." Diana-worship was the nearest thing Mum had to a religion.” - Kate Atkinson

82. “I didn't just hear music. It seemed as if I were part of the music.” - Don Piper

83. “O Alaah, i haven't worshiped you because of lusting of heaven or fearing of hill. I've worshiped you because you deserve to be worshiped.” - Ali Bin Abi Thalib

84. “Submission, when it is submission to the truth — and when the truth is known to be both beautiful and merciful — has nothing in common with fatalism or stoicism as these terms are understood in the Western tradition, because its motivation is different. According to Fakhr ad-Din ar-RazT, one of the great commentators upon the Quran: The worship of the eyes isweeping, the worship of the ears is listening, the worship of the tongue is praise, the worship of the hands is giving, the worship of the body is effort, the worship of the heart is fear and hope, and the worship of the spirit is surrender and satisfaction in Allah.” - Fakhr ad-Din ar-Razi, Gai Eaton

85. “The worship to which we are called in our renewed state is far too important to be left to personal preferences, to whims, or to marketing strategies. It is the pleasing of God that is at the heart of worship. Therefore, our worship must be informed at every point by the Word of God as we seek God’s own instructions for worship that is pleasing to Him.” - R.C. Sproul

86. “The real crisis of worship today is not that the preaching is paltry or that it’s too drafty in church. It is that people have no sense of the presence of God, and if they have no sense of His presence, how can they be moved to express the deepest feelings of their souls to honor, revere, worship, and glorify God?” - R.C. Sproul

87. “It is practically a matter of life or death for a True Cock Worshiper to taste pre-cum.” - Lordess Demonica

88. “A woman has her Juno, just as a man has his Genius; they are names for the sacred power, the divine spark we each of us have in us. My Juno can't "get into" me, it is already my deepest self. The poet was speaking of Juno as if it were a person, a woman, with likes and dislikes: a jealous woman.The world is sacred, of course, it is full of gods, numina, great powers and presences. We give some of them names--Mars of the fields and the war, Vesta the fire, Ceres the grain, Mother Tellus the earth, the Penates of the storehouse. The rivers, the springs. And in the storm cloud and the light is the great power called the father god. But they aren't people. They don't love and hate, they aren't for or against. They accept the worship due them, which augments their power, through which we live.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

89. “Aeneas' mother is a star?""No; a goddess."I said cautiously, "Venus is the power that we invoke in spring, in the garden, when things begin growing. And we call the evening star Venus."He thought it over. Perhaps having grown up in the country, among pagans like me, helped him understand my bewilderment. "So do we, he said. "But Venus also became more...With the help of the Greeks. They call her Aphrodite...There was a great poet who praised her in Latin. Delight of men and gods, he called her, dear nurturer. Under the sliding star signs she fills the ship-laden sea and the fruitful earth with her being; through her the generations are conceived and rise up to see the sun; from her the storm clouds flee; to her the earth, the skillful maker, offers flowers. The wide levels of the sea smile at her, and all the quiet sky shines and streams with light..."It was the Venus I had prayed to, it was my prayer, though I had no such words. They filled my eyes with tears and my heart with inexpressible joy.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

90. “[Jesus is] saying that we could be aware of, filled with, and saved by the presence of holy beauty, rather than worship golden calves.” - Anne Lamott

91. “Long looking with admiration produces change. From your heroes you pick up mannerisms and phrases and tones of voice and facial expressions and habits and demeanors and convictions and beliefs. The more admirable the hero is and the more intense your admiration is, the more profound will be your transformation. In the case of Jesus, he is infinitely admirable, and our admiration rises to the most absolute worship. Therefore, when we behold him as we should, the change is profound.” - John Piper

92. “A god is anything that lives outside of God.” - Anthony Liccione

93. “Although there are things that can be done to enhance corporate worship, there is a profound sense in which excellent worship cannot be attained merely by pursuing excellent worship. In the same way that, according to Jesus, you cannot find yourself until you lose yourself, so also you cannot find excellent corporate worship until you stop trying to find excellent corporate worship and pursue God himself. Despite the protestations, one sometimes wonders if we are beginning to worship worship rather than worship God. As a brother put it to me, it’s a bit like those who begin by admiring the sunset and soon begin to admire themselves admiring the sunset.” - D.A. Carson

94. “Most of the church landscape in my lifetime has been heavily invested in trying to do something for Jerry or Sherri or some other icon of unchurchness. The problem is that they have been only about themselves from the moment they could wail for their mothers, and the decision to give them at church what they can find in any self-help book appears now as a choice to abandon the One in whose honor the church gathers. What they need is to be set free from themselves with finality and to be lost in the awesome wonder of the manifest presence of God. It was never God’s desire that He would sit on the sideline and watch us frantically devise impressive ways to reach people or simply hold the line on orthodoxy as though faithfulness can exist in a vacuum apart from fruitfulness. God is the Matter of first importance! Can you say that about your current weekly encounter with church?” - James MacDonald

95. “Let God Himself be the main attraction at church again, and let us be tireless in our insistence that church is for God, about God, through God, and to the glory of His great Son.” - James MacDonald

96. “This perfect, eternal, Holy exchangeIs worship that satisfies both heaven and earth:” - Amy Layne Litzelman

97. “In a society where rationality has ruled so long, the church frequently fails to see that in forsaking the weekly pursuit of the transcendent, we have given up the only ground that was uniquely ours in this world. In attempting to make the church something that can attract and add value to secular mind-sets, we have turned our backs on our one true proposition - transcendence.” - James MacDonald

98. “The entity God created to traffic His transcendence has fallen far from its mission when it chooses instead to traffic what can be found on any street corner or at the local mall. You may ask, "But how has the church done that?" * By offering secularists what they find mildly interesting and calling it church.*By submitting to self-help sermons where encounter with God is not even on the agenda.* By letting the horizontal excellence of the show stand in for Vertical impact.*By substituting the surprise or shock of superficial entertainment for the supernatural.Church was designed to deliver what we were created to long for. Church must again be about a Vertical encounter that interrupts and alters everything.” - James MacDonald

99. “Stephan was secretive and a liar, but he was a very gentle and expert lover. She was the petted, cherished child, the desired mistress, the worshipped, perfumed goddess. She was all these things to Stephan - or so he made her believe.” - Jean Rhys

100. “Christians—who have no patience with Darwinistic materialism—often sound as progressive as the most ardent evolutionist. They look for “new” theologies, “new” ways of worship, and “new” music, being quite willing to toss out their entire “old-fashioned” Christian heritage.” - Gene Edward Veith

101. “...childlike wonder and awe have died. The scenery and poetry and music of the majesty of God have dried up like a forgotten peach at the back of the refrigerator.” - John Piper

102. “When something becomes so important to you that it drives your behavior and commands your emotions, you are worshipping it.” - J.D. Greear

103. “Remember: He WANTS your fellowship, and He has done everything possible to make it a reality. He has forgiven your sins, at the cost of His own dear Son. He has given you His Word, and the priceless privilege of prayer and worship.” - Billy Graham

104. “I always have the feeling we are merely fearfully trying to save room for God; I would rather speak of God at the center than at the limits, in strength rather than weakness, and thus in human life and goodness rather than in death and guilt.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

105. “Every man becomes the image of the God he adores.He whose worship is directed to a dead thing becomes dead.He who loves corruption rots.He who loves a shadow becomes, himself, a shadow. He who loves things that must perish lives in dread of their perishing.” - Thomas Merton

106. “Every moment I live, I live bowed to something. And if I don't see God, I'll bow down before something else.” - Ann Voskamp

107. “Good Christian liturgy is friendship in action, love taking thought, the covenant relationship between God and his people not simply discovered and celebrated like the sudden meeting of friends, exciting and worthwhile though that is, but thought through and relished, planned and prepared -- an ultimately better way for the relationship to grow and at the same time a way of demonstrating what the relationship is all about.” - N.T. Wright

108. “Waking up is the dangerous act of worship. It's dangerous because worship is meant to produce lives fully attentive to reality as God sees it, and that's more than most of us want to deal with.” - Mark Labberton

109. “The great would not think themselves demigods if the little did not worship them.” - Pierre-Claude-Victor Boiste

110. “I needed to decide if I would still worship God if he allowed Matt to lose his eye.” - K. Howard Joslin

111. “God thundered again and again through the prophets that worship in the context of mistreatment of the poor and disadvantaged is an outrage.” - Ronald J. Sider

112. “Jesus lived a life of deep meditation. If thoughts and words were physical objects, meditation would be the act of holding, examining, taking apart, tasting, smelling, listening to, and savoring in order to study and become one.” - amy litzelman

113. “They no longer wanted to entice anyone; all they wanted was to catch a glimpse for as long as possible of the reflected glory in the great eyes of Odysseus” - Franz Kafka

114. “Worship is not about the posture of your body; worship is about the posture of your heart.” - Rodney Burton

115. “The noise around us determines how we speak. And how we listen. Just as a conversation suffers in a war zone, art suffers in a culture built on noise. So does our enjoyment of it.” - Michael Gungor

116. “There were thieves and hypocrites among us, to be sure, and true saints sprinkled here and there, but most were simply good, honest people who worshiped their Creator the best they knew how. We were a family.” - Donna Chapman Gilbert

117. “Let us be so taken up with the knowledge of God's goodness and the desire to fellowship with Him that our emotions are warmed and our outer man reflects great love. Although we must not seek emotional experiences for their own sake, we must not shun them merely because others misuse them or ignore God's instructions on worship.” - Elyse Fitzpatrick

118. “...all this time I've been worshiping you - when other men wanted to kiss you, I've been offering the praise of my lips...” - John Geddes

119. “...is worship too strong a word? yes, I worship you - to worship is to give worth to something – isn’t that what love is all about?...” - John Geddes

120. “...I put you on the pedestal - made you a saint - dare I blaspheme?...” - John Geddes

121. “...I worship at the temple of your body and without you, I'd have no art...” - John Geddes

122. “...when I chose you, I didn't want the commonplace - I didn't want a 'partner' - I wanted a shrine...” - John Geddes

123. “...why do people venerate Einstein or Bill Gates? Clive Bell explains: Genius worship is the inevitable sign of an uncreative age....” - John Geddes

124. “...but you - women like you are dangerous- ominous – take care, Love – men will first fear you, then later, turn you into a deity...” - John Geddes

125. “...I can think of other forms of worship than loving you, but none that make me feel so fulfilled...” - John Geddes

126. “Every service is a structure of acts and words through which we rceive a sacrament, or repent, or supplicate, or adore. And it enables us to do these things best--if you like, it 'works' best--when, through long familiarity, we don't have to think about it. As long as you notice, and have to count, the steps, you are not yet dancing but only learning to dance.” - C.S. Lewis

127. “Sixteen of the thirty-eight parables of Jesus deal with money. One out of ten verses in the New Testament deals with that subject. Scripture offers about five hundred verses on prayer, fewer than five hundred on faith, and over two thousand on money. The believer's attitude toward money and possessions is determinative.” - John F. MacArthur Jr.

128. “Sabbath, in the first instance, is not about worship. It is about work stoppage. It is about withdrawal from the anxiety system of Pharaoh, the refusal to let one’s life be defined by production and consumption and the endless pursuit of private well-being.” - Walter Brueggemann

129. “This was our rhythm, our worship: give and take, gift and receive, honor and entrust. Making love to this man wasn’t just an expression of my feelings for him or a carnal, physical need—it was an offering.” - Rachael Wade

130. “True worship leaders worship the Lord at all times and use songs only when necessary.” - Gangai Victor

131. “The surest way to suppress our ability to understand the meaning of God and the importance of worship is to take things for granted...Indifference to the sublime wonder of living is the root of sin.” - Abraham Heschel

132. “He wants in His freedom actually not to be without man but WITH him and in the same freedom not against him but FOR him, and that apart from or even counter to what man deserves. He wants in fact to be man's partner, his almighty and compassionate Saviour. He chooses to give man the benefit of His power, which encompasses not only the high and the distant but also the deep and the near, in order to maintain communion with him in the realm guaranteed by His deity. He determines to love him, to be his God, his Lord, his compassionate Preserver and Saviour to eternal life, and to desire his praise and service.” - Karl Barth

133. “There are no unique postures and times and limitations that restrict our access to God. My relationship with God is intimate and personal. The Christian does not go to the temple to worship. The Christian takes the temple with him or her. Jesus lifts us beyond the building and pays the human body the highest compliment by making it His dwelling place, the place where He meets with us. Even today He would overturn the tables of those who make it a marketplace for their own lust, greed and wealth.” - Ravi Zacharias

134. “That which we most desire, we worship as our god; for that which is chiefly desired is the chief good in his account, who so desires it. And what he counts his chief good, that he makes his god. Desire is an act of worship . . . and to be most desired is that worship, that honor, which is due only to God. To desire anything more or so much as the enjoyment of God is to idolize it, to prostrate the heart to it, and worship it as God only should be worshipped. He only should be that one thing desirable to us above all things. . . .” - David Clarkson

135. “The dearest idol I have known,Whate'er that idol be,Help me to tear it from thy throne,And worship only thee.So shall my walk be close with God,Calm and serene my frame;So purer light shall mark the roadThat leads me to the Lamb.” - William Cowper

136. “For years, the church has emphasized evangelism, teaching, fellowship, missions, and service to society to the neglect of the very source of its power--worship.” - Robert E. Webber

137. “True worship can only take place when we agree to God sitting not only on His throne in the center of the universe, but on the throne that stands in the center of our heart.” - Robert Colman

138. “Worship is giving God the best that He has given you. Be careful what you do with the best you have, Whenever you get a blessing from God, give it back to Him as a love gift. Take time to meditate before God and offer the blessing back to Him in a deliberate act of worship.” - Oswald Chambers

139. “When we worship, we ascend, when we ascend we gain revelation from God.” - Chuck D. Pierce

140. “Worship, then, needs to be characterized by hospitality; it needs to be inviting. But at the same time, it should be inviting seekers into the church and its unique story and language. Worship should be an occasion of cross-cultural hospitality. Consider an analogy: when I travel to France, I hope to be made to feel welcome. However, I don't expect my French hosts to become Americans in order to make me feel at home. I don't expect them to start speaking English, ordering pizza, talking about the New York Yankees, and so on. Indeed, if I wanted that, I would have just stayed home! Instead, what I'm hoping for is to be welcomed into their unique French culture; that's why I've come to France in the first place. And I know that this will take some work on my part. I'm expecting things to be different; indeed, I'm looking for just this difference. So also, I think, with hospitable worship: seekers are looking for something our culture can't provide. Many don't want a religious version of what they can already get at the mall. And this is especially true of postmodern or Gen X seekers: they are looking for elements of transcendence and challenge that MTV could never give them. Rather than an MTVized version of the gospel, they are searching for the mysterious practices of the ancient gospel.” - James K.A. Smith

141. “The weekly worship service can be very effective in evangelism of non-Christians and in edification of Christians if it does not aim at either alone but is gospel centered and in the vernacular.” - Timothy Keller

142. “God directs his people not simply to worship but to sing his praises “before the nations.” We are called not simply to communicate the gospel to nonbelievers; we must also intentionally celebrate the gospel before them.” - Timothy Keller

143. “Earlier in this century someone claimed that we work at our play and play at our work. Today the confusion has deepened: we worship our work, work at our play, and play in our worship.” - Leland Ryken

144. “The solution to our human frailty is not to try harder, but to turn Godward.” - Dillon Burroughs

145. “Our worship of God is not a part of our lives; worship is our lives.” - Dillon Burroughs

146. “It is when we experience God most closely that our hearts burn most passionately to show his compassion to others.” - Dillon Burroughs

147. “Divine worship means the same thing where time is concerned, as the temple where space is concerned. "Temple" means... that a particular piece of ground is specially reserved, and marked off from the remainder of the land which is used either for agriculture or habitation... Similarly in divine worship a certain definite space of time is set aside from working hours and days... and like the space allotted to the temple, is not used, is withdrawn from all merely utilitarian ends.” - Josef Pieper

148. “The vacancy left by absence of worship is filled by mere killing of time and by boredom, which is directly related to inability to enjoy leisure; for one can only be bored if the spiritual power to be leisurely has been lost. There is an entry in Baudelaire... "One must work, if not from taste then at least from despair. For, to reduce everything to a single truth: work is less boring than pleasure.” - Josef Pieper