All my teenage years I spent growing up in a church worship band. Worshipping God through music was a vital part of my spiritual growth, and I spent a lot of time worshipping God. As musicians and worshippers, we were taught how to spend time with God in the privacy of our own rooms with a guitar and a song.
I remember that many times when I would come into my own personal time of worship, I would struggle with a small voice that would remind me of all my sins and tell me I had no right to come into God's presence in worship. Have you ever experienced something similar?
Worshipping God requires that we have blameless hearts and holy lives. Leviticus 11:44a tells us, "For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy" (ESV). Because we serve a God who is pure and holy, we must be pure and holy as well as we approach His throne. But we can never be holy and pure because we have all fallen short of God's standards. That small voice that tells us that we're not worthy to enter into God's presence? That small voice is right; we don't deserve to enter God's throne, but the beautiful thing is that God invites us anyway.
Hebrews 4:16: "Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need" (ESV). God doesn't want us to just draw near to His throne in worship, He wants us also to draw near with confidence, knowing that we will be recipients of His grace and not His fiery wrath.
The only reason we can enter God's presence in worship is because Jesus has made a way for us. Hebrews likens Jesus to a high priest. A high priest, in Old Testament times, was the only link that people had to God. It was through the work and sacrifice of a high priest that people could come to God in petition and prayer. We now have that perpetual high priest in Jesus Christ.
We may not deserve to come into the presence of the almighty and holy Father, but because Jesus has washed us clean of our sins and unrighteousness with His own blood, we now have full access and confidence to come into God's presence and worship Him.
We never come into God's presence because we can earn the right to worship by our own strength. If it were by our own works, then we would never be able to come to God again! But because Jesus bridges us to the Father by the work of the cross, we can now come to God and enjoy the privilege of worshipping and praising Him anytime and anywhere.
