Unlocking the Heavens: Release the Supernatural Power of Your Worship (2 page)

What can happen when we are in symphony and when the Light shows up? I can think of three clear results, and there are more. (That’s why it will take the rest of this book to explore the topic.)

1. New sounds break old cycles
.

Whenever you release God’s new sound, something about that sound breaks old cycles. You see, your voice does matter. That’s why the psalm says, “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord” (Psalm 150:6). You have a tone that I don’t have.

Did you know that there are only seven ways to mark a person’s individuality? One of those seven ways is the tone of your voice. Nobody else on the face of the earth has your voice tone. An expert can pattern your speech and your voice tone and identify you by them. The other identifiers include the distinctive irises of your eye, your footprints, your handprints, your fingerprints, the texture of your hair, and of course your DNA. God put all of these markers into you, including the sound of your voice, to make you a unique individual.

The Bible tells us to use our voices to praise Him. In other words, let everything that has breath release their individual sounds. Then something will happen—God will show up.

Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16 tell us that we are to praise God in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Is every song we sing a brand-new one? Not necessarily. A new sound can be a new sound on an old song. That’s what the heavenly host is doing all the time. In Heaven they are worshipping by singing the songs of Moses:

And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire: and them that had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name, stand on the sea of glass, having the harps of God. And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints
(Revelation 15:2-3 KJV).

So the heavenly host is singing his songs, and yet, as far as we know, Moses wrote only two songs. He wrote the first song after he led the people out of four hundred years of Egyptian captivity, just before the people entered the wilderness. Moses wrote the second song just before the children of Israel were allowed to go into the Promised Land, as they were leaving the wilderness and making the transition into something new. These new songs broke old cycles. The first new song released the children of Israel from Egyptian captivity. The second new song broke the cycle of forty years of wandering in the wilderness and released the Israelites to go into the Promised Land. New sounds break old cycles.

2. New sounds release strategy
.

How can you know what God wants you to do? Try releasing a new sound. We know that new sounds release strategies from Heaven, because we see it in Judges 6, the story of Gideon.

The angel of the Lord got the attention of a young man by the name of Gideon and he hailed him as a mighty man of valor. Gideon was incredulous at first, but eventually he went out at night and tore down the altars of Baal that his father had built. As soon as he had finished tearing down the altars of Baal, he built an altar to the Lord and he began to worship the Lord. He reestablished proper worship. Israel had been worshipping idols; God used Gideon to reestablish proper worship. What happened next? God had promised to tell him how to defeat the Midianites and He did. God gave him a specific and unusual strategy. He told him that he didn’t need a large army, even though the Midianite army was a big one, but rather that he needed only three hundred handpicked men. Then God gave him a strategy (see Judges 7). It sounded outlandish, but the strategy included arming each of the three hundred men with an empty pitcher and a lamp. He was also supposed to give each man a trumpet. Crazy as it sounded, the strategy worked. That little band of men defeated the mighty Midianite army.

The strategy was given to Gideon only after true worship had been released. This shows how God can supply a much-needed strategy for warfare whenever God-centered worship is released. With a new sound comes a new strategy.

3. New sounds break the spirit of division
.

We learn this from the same story. Gideon told his men, “Take the clay pot and the lamp and the horn. At a certain time I want you to break the pots, show your lights, and release a loud sound. By this means we will destroy the Midianites.”

The name “Midianite” means strife and division. The God-ordained sound destroyed the Midianites and what they stood for. We can beat the spirit of division in our communities in the same way. By finding the sound that God wants to release in the earth, we can tear down the spirit of division between people, overcome the racism, and bring peace in the place of strife. The sound that God will give us will tear down the walls of division that separate us. It all depends on the sound.

WORSHIP IS ESSENTIAL

Worship is not about a style or place. It is primarily vertical in its focus upon the Godhead. There is more happening in worship than we could ever imagine. Powerful spiritual dynamics occur throughout worship, much more than we can perceive from our earthly perspective.

The power of pure worship provokes a response in the heavens. Did you know that the Godhead is active around the throne when worshippers offer pure, spiritual worship? That’s the word picture that Zephaniah paints for us. God sings and dances under strong emotion as He responds to His children’s cries:

The Lord your God is with you; the mighty One will save you. He will rejoice over you. You will rest in his love; he will sing and be joyful about you
(Zephaniah 3:17 NCV).

In the heavens, the angels stand amazed at the Lord’s response to His beloved as He releases His love songs over the Church. This is why it is so important for us to worship in the ways that bring pleasure to Him. We discover His tastes by studying the tabernacle of David. Within its humble curtains, the sounds of prayer, praise, and proclamation were being released continuously, and God responded with blessings.

God has promised to restore the power of the Davidic order of worship in the last days. Accompanying this revelation of worship will be a powerful move of the Holy Spirit in the earth that will bring in a harvest of souls.

Angels are very active during worship, and people often sense or see them in the midst of powerful worship services. Also, Jesus told us, “For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20). He is in our midst when we worship together.

Exodus 32:17-18 makes it clear that worship sounds like warfare to the heavens. When the people of God worship, spiritual entities assemble and do battle. Through the warfare of worship and by taking our rightful place as worship instruments, we secure the pathway to dominion. Spiritual authority is established in and through true worship. Our praise chokes off our enemies and destroys the yokes that bind us. Praise becomes a beautiful, powerful garment that replaces the spirits of heaviness and oppression.

Our worship is powerful, and we must be careful not to allow that power to be corrupted or compromised in any way. We must not betray our Lord, as did Judas, with the kiss of false worship. Every worshipper must make a priority of protecting the purity of worship through holy living and proper spiritual alignment. Those of us who are anointed as worship leaders and spiritual authorities dare not merchandise our anointing for personal gain or recognition. Spiritual leaders have a responsibility to protect our flocks from malcontents disguised as sheep who seek to rape the spiritual landscape through their merchandised worship. We will explore all of these in more depth in the chapters that follow.

THE NEW WINE IS IN THE CLUSTER

Isaiah says that the new wine is in the cluster (see Isaiah 65:8). Psalm 133 echoes this truth by stating that there is a priestly anointing released upon the unity of believers, every one of whom is part of the priesthood of all believers (see 1 Peter 2:9). Only the Levites were allowed to carry the Ark of the Covenant, and the word
Levi
means “joined.” The glory of the Lord can be made fully known to the world only when the Body of Christ joins together in a harmonious way. We do not have to sing in unison, but we must sing in harmony! We can continue to be distinctive, but we must refuse to be divisive!

The Body of Christ must discover its corporate ability. Individual worship is powerfully effective; however, it is not nearly as effective as corporate worship. The Church’s greatest anointing will come only when the Body of Christ, the
perfect Bride
, stands up in unity.

Streams of ministry are converging for such a time as this to release the sound of Heaven in the earth. I have found that when sermons cannot get people together, a song can. I know that worship will be one of the essential unifying factors for the Church in the last days. The Church will discover and unleash new sounds so that “…the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 3:10). A convergence of Heaven and earth is taking place right now! The Kingdom is coming to earth as it is in Heaven. God has always chosen to do His finest work through His Church. We, the Body of Christ, must prepare ourselves for God’s final agenda in the earth.

Worship is a powerful weapon in the arsenal of the believer. On the wings of worship, you can take heavenly flight with the angels around the throne where you will discover the innumerable facets of God’s unspeakable glory. The greatest desire in the heart of God is to be known by the men and women He has created. Our greatest need is to know God. Worship—the most natural thing in the world for the Christian and the reason for our creation—is the vehicle of intimacy. It always has been, and it always will be.

Listen! Can you hear the sound of Heaven? Raise your voice and join in!

Chapter 2

THE POWER OF SOUND

O come, let us sing unto the Lord: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms
(P
SALM
95:1-2 KJV)
.

Y
ou may think that worship and praise is just us standing there “aweing” God. But it’s much more than that. Worship is
loud
. It’s filled with all kinds of sounds. Together those blended sounds make up a “new song” of perpetual praise to our God.

In the first chapter, I introduced the idea of agreement (
sumphonio
) in prayer and worship. God likes what He hears when two or more people make a harmonious appeal to Heaven, because their worship has been inspired by God in the first place. Their divinely combined voices guarantee a heavenly response.

Look again at Matthew 18:19. Here are Jesus’ words: “Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven.” In other words, if the right sound of two or more people coming together mixes and blends and releases a symphony into the atmosphere, a corresponding release takes place in the heavens; God acts on behalf of the worshipping people who are part of His Kingdom on earth. James wrote, “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you” (James 4:8 KJV). You
draw nigh
with the release of a sound. Earth has to make a sound before Heaven will respond.

THE SOUNDS OF THE TABERNACLE OF DAVID

David’s tabernacle stood for forty years in Israel. It was a place of worship, a tent housing Moses’ Ark of the Covenant, and King David set it up right on Mount Zion (Jerusalem). Moses had instituted a worship system in his tabernacle that involved animal sacrifices, but David substituted “sacrifices of praise”—joyful songs of thanksgiving. Day and night for four decades, a new sound of worship was released heavenward from the tabernacle of David. Eventually, David’s son Solomon moved the tabernacle into his newly built temple (see 2 Chronicles 5–7).

David’s tabernacle did not keep people out as Moses’ tabernacle had done with its Outer Court, Holy Place, and Holy of Holies. Instead, the people of Israel could come and go twenty-four hours a day. Following David’s initiative, no longer were the priests the sole proprietors of the priestly functions of making offerings. Now all could worship freely, making their sacrifices of praise. They worshipped with their voices, even choirs of voices. They played stringed instruments. Trumpets blared. Shouts rang out. After David died, some of the subsequent kings (the ones who were righteous, starting with his son Solomon) further established Davidic worship. They were rewarded by a response from Heaven in the form of repeated spiritual renewal and military victories.

The Davidic style of worship is now the pattern, not only for those of the post-Davidic Old Testament era, but also, as James explained to the early church, for all New Testament believers, including you and me. James, quoting the prophet Amos, explained in Acts 15:13-18 how the Davidic order of worship would become normative. He quoted as follows:

On that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down, and repair its damages; I will raise up its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old
(Amos 9:11).

Isaiah 16:5 and Amos 9:11-12 refer to the tabernacle of David by name. Any time we read Old Testament prophecies about Zion, the mountain of the Lord, or often, the glory of the Lord, the prophecy concerns Davidic worship because it refers to the coming Messianic Kingdom.

The New Testament authors picked up the same theme, quoting and echoing the Old Testament. John wrote that Jesus had tabernacle-damong us (John 1:14). The new Church is called the temple of God (see 1 Corinthians 3:16; Ephesians 2:19-22). The Church maintained the Davidic form of worship—noisy, heartfelt, corporate worship. Dating from the Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was given to the Church, boisterous worship increased. (See Acts 2. Remember, the bystanders thought the believers were drunk!)