And we should have the same, personal joy in a personal Saviour expressed in worship that comes welling up from the heart. While together we adore him as our Lord, yet for each individual he should be my Lord.  And it is this personal love and joy which lights up and vitalises Christian worship.

We must get far beyond the common idea that worship is the same thing as attendance at church services.  Worship is an active expression of an inner devotion.  It is not just looking and listening, or singing hymns to familiar tunes and watching dignified ceremonial.  Such things are but outward forms: to become acts of worship they have to be warmed and enlivened by the offering of the heart, by a personal love and joy in our Saviour.

Without that offering, worship is meaningless and empty.  And it is an injunction in Holy Scripture that none shall appear before the Lord empty (Exodus 23:15; Deuteronomy 16:16).  If we come empty-hearted we shall also go empty-hearted, for, as Our Lord has told us, the measure we give will be the measure we get (Matthew 7:2).