John Piper from #Sing18, on worship:
The inner essence of worship is experiencing Christ and all that God is for us in Him as a more satisfying treasure than everything that death can take and life can give. To be a Christian is to be born again to that. That’s what happens when you become a Christian. Your heart shifts off of preferring the world to preferring Christ. That’s the meaning of new birth. That’s the meaning of conversion. To live the Christian life in all of its practicalities is to act out of that. And where people are not acting out of that, I don’t think what they are acting is the fruit of righteousness.
Also:
If you handle the majesties of God with the same casual demeanor you use when you told the illustration about your cat, you’re out of touch with the reality. And you know over time the people are going to know this. You can fool unspiritual people forever. You can’t fool Christians. I’m talking about people who have the Holy Spirit and are walking into your service with the Living God in them expecting to hear His Word dealt out with exultation that corresponds to the nature of the reality you’ve just opened in the text. They know. They know whether you are in touch. Don’t fake it. Just quit the ministry if all you can do is fake it.
There are actors in the pulpit. They can pull it off for a long time because they grow a church of unspiritual people. And unspiritual people are deceivable. Spiritual people are going to just drift away from that church. It’ll grow like crazy! But the real Christians are down the street in a little church where the man is real. He’s real. He walks in there from the closet with God and the aroma of Jesus is on him. They can smell it.