Total Worship: A Life of Deep Communion with God

Endorsements

My spirit was not only stirred up to worship, but I was also deeply enlightened on what worship is. Every worshiper needs this teaching and motivation. Biblical worship is not only in words, but in actions. Worship brings God back to the gospel and the church. Welcome to the worship workshop.

—Pastor D Tindike (Lecturer,

Heritage of Faith Bible Institute, Soweto)

This book is so anointed. It is always natural for anyone to relate to personal experiences; that’s what makes this book outstanding.

—Pastor Baldwin Baloyi (founder and

presiding pastor of Life of God Ministry)

TOTAL WORSHIP

A Life of Deep Communion with God

LUCKY L. SELEPE

Copyright © 2015 Lucky Selepe.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Unless otherwise specified, all the Bible Scriptures used are from the New King James Version of the Holy Bible, copyright© 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Scripture references marked KJV have been taken from the King James Version of the Holy Bible. The scriptures marked GNT are taken from the Good News Translation (Today’s English Version, second edition) Copyright© 1992 American Bible Society. All the emphasis of Scriptures or parts thereof in bold is the author’s.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4908-7085-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-7083-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-7084-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015903272

WestBow Press rev. date: 02/19/2015

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1    The God of the Universe

Chapter 2    Designed to Worship

Chapter 3    What Is Worship?

Chapter 4    The Acts of Worship

Chapter 5    Communion With God

Chapter 6    Upside Down: Inverted Order of Priorities

Chapter 7    Power of Worship

Chapter 8    Unconditional Worship

Chapter 9    Worship in Spirit and in Truth

Chapter 10    Creating an Atmosphere of Worship

Conclusion

Prayer of Salvation

Acknowledgments

F irst of all, let me acknowledge my God, Jehovah, for giving me the privilege to put these revelations and inspirations in a book format. I have never been a natural writer. Therefore, putting this material together is a miracle of His grace. The truths in this book are not the product of the natural man; they are God at work, and I believe that those who read will receive from the throne room of glory and partake of the same abundant grace.

I want to acknowledge and appreciate my lovely wife, Rose Selepe, who had to sacrifice time and encouraged me to write this book to the glory of God. Without her support, this work would not be possible.

Also, I would love to acknowledge the contributions of Pastor Kagiso Mthembu (also known as KG) and Pastor Stephen Selepe. I deeply appreciate my lecturer, Pastor Tindike, who sacrificed His time to proofread and gave me valuable input for this project. The same goes to pastor Baldwin Baloyi and Pastor Steven Selepe, who took time to proofread the manuscript.

Preface

W hen one has many life-changing experiences with God, he or she has no choice but to share it with the body of Christ. Total Worship: The Life of Deep Communion With God is a divine inspiration from God, based on practical encounters with God through worship. I have come to a point where I cannot afford to ignore the burden and inspiration of putting such a treasure of experiences in writing. I had to ask God for the grace to be able to write. I am highly confident that many will be inspired to experience God through the power of biblical worship.

Introduction

But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the father is seeking such to worship Him.

—John 4:23

T hough often misconstrued, worship remains the most integral and fundamental element of our relationship with God. The greatest of all Christian experiences is that of deep communion with God/Jehovah. Everything else follows this kind of relationship. The deepest level of communion with God is arrived at through true biblical worship. The essence of Christianity hinges around worship. The Church of Christ cannot exist at all without worship.

Jesus showed the Samaritan woman that the people had been worshipping incorrectly. One of the reasons was that they had been worshipping a god they didn’t know. This meant that people could genuinely go about worshipping God, only to find that they were doing it incorrectly. Then what is true worship? And how do we worship God the right way? It seems that one could commit one’s whole life to something that is not true worship. That would be indeed a real failure of life.

When I received a revelation of what true worship is, I discovered that I had been missing out all along. The challenge is often that we do not know that we are missing out; thus we neither push any further nor even strive for another level. It seems almost impossible for one to get enough of worship, once one gets a true revelation of God regarding worship. Worship can be addictive. The more you know about worship, the more you develop an insatiable desire to know and worship Him more, and the more effective you become in worship. The more one worships, the hungrier one gets for worship.

Visions about Worship

One night, I was praying to and worshipping God. I laid myself across the floor in surrender to the Most High God. I was groaning in the spirit. I was in deep fellowship with Him. My spirit was in union with the Spirit of God, declaring the deep things of God. As soon as I was satisfied, I went to sleep, and that’s when I saw a vision.

In the vision, I saw myself lying prostrate across the floor, worshipping God. I heard a whispering voice that affirmed me, saying, This is the way to worship. In the spirit I saw a wave of power and glory stirred up and filling the church. Then God revealed to my spirit that if I want to see the power and the glory of God, I must be a true worshiper. This led me to want to understand what true worship is all about. God was leading me to something that would change the atmosphere of worship in the church.

The Bible says that they that worship must worship in spirit and in truth. (See John 4: 23.) I had to know what it meant to worship in truth and in spirit. God started dealing with me in this area, and He attested to it with signs.

The Vision: Jesus Christ Manifests in Response to Worship

The first confirmation was a vision God gave to one of our pastors, by the name of Kagiso (also known as KG). In the vision, according to his report, a few members of our church were going up a mountain as a group. All of a sudden it was only me and him at the apex of the mountain. Immediately I said to Him, KG, let’s bow down and worship, for I can sense the glory of God. Upon bowing down, we saw fire from a distance, and out of it came Jesus. He then came straight toward us.

This vision meant that if we truly worship God and are sensitive to His presence, then we shall see God. This prompted us to start practicing the respect of His presence. This led to a second confirmation, which involved practical manifestations of the power of God.

One night while in overnight prayer, I asked everyone to keep quiet to respect the presence of the Holy Spirit. While quiet like that, with our eyes closed, people started falling down from their seats. I knew it was not me, because I had never considered this; I hadn’t intended to make these people fall. I was genuinely respecting the presence of God, in the Holy Spirit, by faith. He was in essence confirming His presence as we acted in faith. It was an obvious manifestation of what God was doing among us. God’s presence was manifesting in our midst. People started deeply groaning from their spirits unto God, prostrating across the floor. For more than an hour people were prostrate on the floor, not petitioning anything to God, but glorifying Him in the Spirit.

Another time, we were singing worship songs and I