Worship

Worship is defined as “chiefly and eminently, the act of paying divine honors to the Supreme Being; or the reverence and homage paid to him in religious exercises, consisting in adoration, confession, prayer, thanksgiving and the like.” To worship is defined as “to adore; to pay divine honors to; to reverence with supreme respect and veneration; to perform acts of adoration; to perform religious service.”—Noah Webster

“Let there be Light” is the first principle of all Creation. Light contains all three Emanations—Wisdom, Love, and the Logos—as One. We worship the Light. Additionally, we must worship God as both principle and personality.

As a law of being, you must retrain yourself in worship to be in a state of reverence toward God, and of awe at the absolute beauty of His Creation—the full spectrum of nature in the world and in the starry cosmos. God Himself instructs us in how to worship him:

“Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof; when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”—Job 38:1-7.

As a law of doing, worship, prayer and praise form the stable threefold bond of our inner personal relationship with our Creator. When you add singing, you make your own foursquare foundation of reality in the world of appearances. Prayer, praise and singing are all verbal expressions of your love for, faith and trust in God, while worship combines them all into a finally silent, wordless adoration and awe.

So, with worship, you complete the two-way circuit that God turned on when He said "Let there be Light" as He created the universe. As God pours out love and Light as life, you take it in from the River of Life as vital soul sustenance, convert it into the many degrees and kinds of energy you need, and return it to God as worship.

As a virtue, worship is how you nurture and sustain the stability and vertical alignment of your moral compass. Worship is a soul power that works best when you exercise it daily, at least.







Edna Lister on Worship

You shall worship one God, and one God only, the God of justice for all.—Edna Lister, October 30, 1938.


Choose, then serve dark or Light. Do not be variable in your worship. If Light is just and perfect, worship Light. If darkness is perfect, then tarry awhile in darkness until your soul tires and chooses Light and only Light. You must be strong with soul’s strength to overcome all darkness.—Edna Lister, January 19, 1939.


You must want the Light above all else and seek it for itself alone, just to worship, not to get something. When you give enough self to the Light, it fills you and you become the Light. However, you must give the self to Light completely, forgetting self in worship of and service to the Light. Then you shine.—Edna Lister, December 30, 1941.


We worship the Light, which contains all principles.—Edna Lister, Six Creative Laws: The Keys of the Kingdom, September 1, 1945.


God has given every soul the full power of a creator. Hourly self may create graven images that to worship—until your soul turns from these images that self creates from distorted opinions and prejudices. Surrender to love. Sacrifice petty self-worship lest—by misuse of that creative Power with which God has endowed you from the beginning—you enliven opinions and prejudices in your subconscious mind that will still create falsely without your conscious consent.—Edna Lister, October 5, 1945.


You cannot become perfect by worshiping the self, but you can through conscious attention and soul observation. Worship of self leads to old age, wasted glands and muscles. Worship of God leads the glories of Light. This is how to achieve, how to be the Light!—Edna Lister, December 13, 1947.


God as principle reveals our reasons for being, but God as personality gives us a personal satisfaction and reassurance. Some must know who, what, when, where and why with a mental rather than a devotional approach. Mankind has lost sight of so much wisdom and has forgotten so much truth. When he stumbles on some lost knowledge, he calls it hidden wisdom or occult truth, and fears it. The relationship between God as personality and God as principle is the same as the difference between mysticism and intelletrualism. When you align your relationship with God as personality, you improve your relationships with others. However, no one can be completely happy unless he has some relationship with God as principle and personality.—Edna Lister, From Light to Form as a Creator: Seven Breaths, August 2, 1949.


We say, Let there be Light, to solve problems, while scientists acknowledge that everything will eventually be resolved into Light. In such rare instances, scientists unwittingly agree with God and the Bible.—Edna Lister, From Light to Form as a Creator: Seven Breaths, August 2, 1949.


You must strike a balance between the intellectual approach, Wisdom, which builds all form under divine principle, and the devotional approach of Love, which nourishes and sustains what Wisdom puts into form. The intellectual approach worships God as principle. The devotional approach worships God as personality. You need both to succeed in life.—Edna Lister, March 31, 1952.


Your daily life is the visible expression of your temple and religion. No one can separate his faith from his actions, or his beliefs from his occupation.—Edna Lister, May 22, 1952.


Aspiration is the embodied soul seeking better food to satisfy its hunger for a higher path to follow than self, the impulsive appetitive soul. The rational soul seeks a Source to worship. The soul knows desire in two ways: Instinctive desire always seeks to ratify appetitive soul, while Oversoul desires to worship God. Indifference weakens your Oversoul desire but strengthens the grip of the impulsive appetitive soul.—Edna Lister, Faith, the Challenger, 1953.


Worship of God as personality is essential. To believe otherwise drains the romance from eternal life and religion. Who can be passionate about becoming part of some blah cloud of mindless unconscious substance? Worshiping a God who could wipe out your individual personality is impossible.—Edna Lister, June 22, 1954.


Your love of God is not true love until you can forget that you had ever made a sacrifice of self to express His greatness as you. When opening your eyes in the morning becomes an act of worship, your love of God will finally be great enough.—Edna Lister, October 5, 1954.


Man will never be complete, happy or even satisfied with only self to worship. However, this is why humanity, in its search for something greater than itself, follows demagogues and evil ideas.—Edna Lister, Eternal Youth, 1956.


God is both personality and principle. You obey principle, but worship personality.—Edna Lister, October 16, 1956.


Let there be Light is a general statement of principle that includes, but is greater than lesser expressions of worship. Declaring, Let there be Light is how you express as God by speaking the Word.—Edna Lister, November 5, 1956.


You can discard from any religion the part that does not recognize the Master as the Son of God and the Sermon on the Mount as the Proclamation of he Christed Age.—Edna Lister, February 5, 1957.


Only love of God makes you complete; worship of principle leaves you cold and drains your vitality. Love’s fire warms the soul.—Edna Lister, December 5, 1957.


You may not tell another how to worship. God accepts each at his own level.—Edna Lister, September 4, 1958.


Acceptance of and surrender to law, then complete devotion to it is true worship of the One God.—Edna Lister, May 15, 1959.


Irresponsibility, is a creature state of consciousness, the root of agnosticism and atheism.—Edna Lister, Heaven as a State of Consciousness and as a Place, June 16, 1959.


God did not stop communicating with the Bible. People stopped listening for Him and fail to recognize His miracles.—Edna Lister, The Song of the Lamb, December 17, 1961.


Most atheists and agnostics’ repudiation is born of the fact that they want to be convinced, but no one can provide them proof of God using earthly logic and reason. The soul either knows or repudiates.—Edna Lister, How Did I Get Here? May 8, 1962.


Religion has divided the world into two classes, those who worship God as personality, and those who worship God as principle. Half the world worships God as a person, the other half worship scientific principles and metaphysics. The atheists and agnostics say that God does not count make up the minority.—Edna Lister, Do You Always Wear Your Crown? December 11, 1966.


Some believers trust in a heaven you make here, and others believe heaven is a place. Yet no one can deny that they are in a place now. Heaven is a state of consciousness and a place. man’s difficulty is in reconciling the visible with the invisible. Half the world believes to see, and the other half has to see to believe.—Edna Lister, Do You Always Wear Your Crown? December 11, 1966.


Man made a god in his own image and likeness, has thrown it from its pedestal and smashed it. This is good. To know that God is Light, the Source of all That Is—and that is man’s greatest Good.—Edna Lister, Do You Always Wear Your Crown? December 11, 1966.


We put no god before God, nor do we worship false gods. We worship God as Light, as the All That Is.—Edna Lister, The Supremacy of Religion, November 27, 1967.


Religion’s source is in the soul’s knowing that God is and from the desire to worship and aiew His Light, but creeds and dogma are manmade.—Edna Lister, June 13, 1968.


An atheist has more reasons to justify why he believes there is no God than believers do for why God is.—Edna Lister, Undated Papers, 1924-1971.


You worship what you believe in—an image, the void of atheism, the confusion of agnosticism, or the true Source of all Light.—Edna Lister, Undated Papers, 1924-1971.

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New Testament on Worship

Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of theworld, and the glory of them; and saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.—Matthew 4:8-10, Luke 4:8.


The woman [at the well in Samaria] saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.—John 4:19-24.


God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshiped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; and hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.—Acts 17:24-28.


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 marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints. Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for thou only art holy: for all nations shall come and worship before thee; for thy judgments are made manifest.—Revelation 15:2-4.


And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, These are the true sayings of God. And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me, See thou do it not: I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus: worship God: for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.—Revelation 19:9-10.

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Old Testament on Worship

Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.—Psalm 29:2.


Exalt ye the Lord our God, and worship at His footstool, for He is holy.—Psalm 99:5.

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The worshiping of idols not to be named is the beginning, the cause, and the end, of all evil.—Wisdom of Solomon 14:27.


Man made false gods, and borrowed his own spirit to fashion them: but no man can make a god like unto himself, for being mortal, he works a dead thing with wicked hands: for he himself is better than the things which he worships: for he lived once, but they never.—Wisdom of Solomon 15:16-17.

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Edna Miriam Lister
1884—1971
The original Christian Pioneering Mystic,
Platonist philosopher, American Idealist, Founder, Society of the Universal Living Christ, minister, teacher, author, wife, and mother.


Edna Lister


Etymology of worship: Old English wordscip, condition of being worthy, honor, renown, from weord=worthy+ ‑scipe=‑ship=condition of being.


Worship is a law of being.
Worship is a soul virtue.
Worship is a law of doing.


Quote

Worship is transcendent wonder; wonder for which there is now no limit or measure; that is worship.—Thomas Carlyle, Heroes and Hero-Worship, 1840


References

The Holy Bible. King James Version (KJV).

The Nag Hammadi Library. James M. Robinson, ed. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988.

The Oxford English Dictionary. Compact Edition Oxford University Press, 1971.

Webster, Noah. “Worship,” Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language. New York: S. Converse, 1828. This work is in the public domain.


Related Topic

Religion