More Thoughts on Worship

While choosing which conference talk to share while visiting teaching this week, I was led to the one by Bishop Dean M. Davies - The Blessings of Worship. "Worship" is a subject I've returned to again and again; there's always something for me to learn. I loved how Bishop Davies tied worship to faith, hope and charity, and turned it into a perfect thought for November by mentioning gratitude and thanksgiving at the end.

The topic of worship came up again as I studied John 4 (the woman at the well story) for seminary and came across this quote:

True and perfect worship consists in following in the steps of the Son of God; it consists in keeping the commandments and obeying the will of the Father to that degree that we advance from grace to grace until we are glorified in Christ as he is in his Father. It is far more than prayer and sermon and song. It is living and doing and obeying. It is emulating the life of the great Exemplar.

It comes from an excellent talk by Elder Bruce R. McConkie - How to Worship. If you read it, you can find out what cows and crocodiles have to do with worship. I love the list of concrete examples he gives because it helps me understand the subject better.

I have more thoughts, quotes and scriptures over here on this post.

And I thought I had already shared this quote, but I'm not finding it, so here you go:

“One time a man asked President Spencer W. Kimball, ‘What do you do when you find yourself in a boring sacrament meeting?’ There was silence for a moment and then President Kimball said, ‘I don’t know. I’ve never been in one.’ That’s interesting, isn’t it? That tells me that the real meeting was really between President Kimball and the Lord, in addition to what was happening in sacrament meeting. If you are just in [the meeting], you are in the wrong meeting, and you will miss most of what is said. The same is true of other meetings. If you enter a meeting with your heart prepared to be written upon by the Lord, then that will happen” (Elder Gene R. Cook in “Learning Gospel Is Lifetime Pursuit,” Church News, Mar. 24, 1990, 10). Note that I found this in my Doctrine & Covenants teacher's seminary manual.