INSTRUCTIONS ON WORSHIP PARTICIPATION
In this walk with God, when each man does his own thing or has an audience, it is old order. When someone sings or prophesies, it belongs to the Walk only if they are an expression of the whole body and the whole body is participating with them. When you have an audience, you do not have body ministry. It is in the participation, where every spirit is set upon one thing, that we really move as a body.
In the past, we did nothing but war against that tendency of each man doing his own thing. As a result, for a while we emphasized singing antiphonal psalms where one would sing a line and everyone else would join back in singing. I really feel that I would rather see that than some of the psalms we were having, which were a sort of ballad singer’s style, a folk style where everyone kind of sings along.
When you sing, sing as though the whole body were singing with you. Sing clearly, enunciate plainly, and everyone participates in it. And when you sing, stand; throw your head back and belt it out. Don’t worry about putting across a certain style of singing. Just enter in and sing.
Avoid exhortation heaviness in your prophesying. We do not exhort the people, we create. We impart, we proclaim it instead of just exhorting them. The people don’t need “Now I exhort you, in the name of the Lord, that you consecrate yourself to the Lord.” We do not need to be exhorted over and over again. We need someone to come with creative faith and prophesy like this: “You are walking in a new level; you are doing this and that.” Lift them up, create. Stop and think for a moment. What have I taught you for years? Have I beat you down? How have you changed: because I was constantly riding you, or did I hold before you a high level and talk about it, prophesy it, and you just gravitated to it? The book of Isaiah tells us how it will be. The house of the Lord will be established above the mountains and all the nations will flow way up into it (Isaiah 2:2). Gravity is to be reversed. The upward pull will grow stronger and stronger. Just prophesy it. People will come and say, “Teach us the way of the Lord, show us His Word.”
The mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the chief of the mountains, and will be raised above the hills; and all the nations will stream to it. And many people will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that He may teach us concerning His ways and that we may walk in His paths. For the law will go forth from Zion, and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” Isaiah 2:2, 3.
That means the upward pull will grow stronger from season to season. Under old order we constantly exhorted and preached to people to keep them from drifting off. We had to constantly pull them up because the spiritual gravity pulled them down. Now we come to a reversal of that and the spiritual gravity pulls us up. That means your prophesying and speaking the Word has to change correspondingly. With the upward pull you prophesy the thing. The house of the Lord and the Word of the Lord is established high, and the people just gravitate to it. Let that idea come into your prophesying and into your psalms because there are still to many soulish exhortations that are passing for prophecy. Let’s not have that. Let’s just keep prophesying the Word of the Lord and draw up high.
When you are utterly exhausted, you will find your refreshing in the worship. That will refresh you and lift you up. Instead of exhorting the people, bless them, or create in them. Our services must be delightful, uplifting services. They have to be. When people are so weary at the end of the day, there must be something refreshing to lift them up, a buoyancy in the prophecy, something joyful, creative, buoyant inspired by the Holy Spirit—the Word of the Lord. If everyone feels a response and that they are in it, it is body ministry.
The body must have, not an arm waving aimlessly, but the whole body moving with the arm. Everything comes forth, all because we have faith and we are believing the word of the Lord. First, you have to believe who you are. The prophecy and the worship should come at such a high level that you cannot tell whether a person is prophesying or not from the tone of voice. This is a prophetic community. It is not the tone of voice that characterizes prophesying, it is the projection of the Spirit, the anointing of the Lord that comes. The following, for example, is good prophesying in a normal tone of voice.
You are the kings and priests of the Lord. You are blessed of the Lord. You are His royal priesthood. You are going to go forth in the highways and byways. There will no longer be any boundary lines. There will be no walls that you will not pass over. You will run like a troop. You will leap a wall. You will be strong in the anointing of the Lord. You are going to do the will of the Lord because He puts it in you to will and the ability to perform of His good pleasure. You will be transformed into the same image.
What do you have to do, O House of God, but to stand and drink in of His presence. And with an unveiled face you behold Him. You are then changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. Reaching into that anointing, reaching into that which is distinctive to you—you, the remnant of the Lord—you are going to walk in His ways and understand His principles. You are going to do His will from the heart. The words are going to be written on the tablets of your hearts, letters of flaming fire. You are going to speak the Word of the Lord in the earth. Amen.
If you have anything to read or to say to the congregation, get right down to the microphone; don’t let it be swallowed up. When the people don’t hear, they blank out, and it means a drop in the service. The service drops while the people are merely standing at attention, waiting for what would happen. It is much easier to march than it is to stand at attention. Men have fainted, just doing nothing, standing at attention. They can pass out, falling flat on their faces, doing nothing. That is what a service does; it falls flat on its face when you are standing at attention doing nothing and hearing nothing. So when you are going to give something, get to that microphone and read or prophesy it! Be bright, alert! Be brief, and be gone!