Burroughs said: "It is a good sign of a gracious fear when the soul can be struck with more fear from the Word and from the sight of God in enjoying communion with Him in His worship than when God appears in the most terrible way of His works, or when there is terror in a man's conscience through fear of hell" (127). Furthermore he pointed out that such fear is an abiding fear, "a fear that must abide upon your hearts after the duty is over" (128).
I don't think I could say (for certain) that we have this type of fear in our culture. I'm thinking about the ease with which we get distracted. Burroughs also commented that "a sight of the glory of God and high thoughts of him" would keep us focused on him in worship (114). Recently, I have noticed that our worship can sometimes be very casual. We turn to each other and make comments when we notice something is wrong in a slide or when a friend walks in late, or when we remember what we were going to say earlier; essentially, it is easy for us to switch our attention from God to any other old thing. You may say, "well, we don't completely lose focus, we get back to the song soon enough." But what about after the service? After our hearts have been "burdened" with such amazing truth, do we continue talking about it? Or are we very quick to let that alleged "fear of God" fade into casual conversation?
My main question is this: Should our worship be casual (in the sense that it is part of our everyday life, something easy for us to do, something fun) or is casual worship a sign that we really don't understand what we are doing at all? I seriously don't know for sure. All I know is moments of true awe and wonder hang with you. And it seems we hang them up in the closet.
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