God is a spirit, and those that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. Title of today's message, How You Should Worship. When God made mankind, He created us for one main purpose, so that we could fellowship with Him daily, and so that we could praise and worship Him.

Now God is worshipped around the clock, in the heavenly realm, by the worship angels who sing continuously. But you see, when God made the worship angels, He made them to sing automatically. That is their job, as it were, in the heavenly realm.

When God made mankind, He wanted somebody who would not worship Him because they had to, but because they wanted to. He wanted somebody who would have a choice, and that they would choose, out of love for Him, to worship Him and to serve Him. And while Adam and Eve maintained that everything was good, daily God met with them in the garden, fellowship with them, and they expressed their love for one another.

They were dependent on God, and they loved and worshipped Him freely, because they wanted to, because they had to. But God gave them a test, and they were given a choice, to be independent of God, and to be able to function without Him. The tree of knowledge of good and evil gave them that ability, and unfortunately they made that choice, and they chose independence instead of dependence on God.

And when they did, they lost everything. Now, Jesus came to restore what was lost by the fall of Adam and Eve. He came to restore us back to that place of fellowship with God, and being able to worship Him out of love for Him, because we want to, because we choose to.

Now, one of the clearest pictures that God gave for us of the pattern for worship was given way back after God called out for Himself a chosen people, the nation of Israel, took them out of Egypt into the wilderness, and there He gave Moses the pattern for a place of worship, which we now know as the tabernacle, originally the tabernacle of Moses, because Moses was given the pattern, and he designed it according to God's pattern. The tabernacle was pretty straightforward. You came in by the main door or the main gate, and when you came in there, you were in an outer public enclosure, and anybody could walk in there, and anybody could get involved in the worship at the level that was taking place in the outer tabernacle.

But then, as you went further in, there were different enclosures. So, we had the gates of the tabernacle, and we had the outer court, and then we had the inner court, and then we had the innermost court. Now, I'm sure you all know the picture.

I don't have to go into detail, but in the outer court, there were two main things. There was the altar where they sacrificed the animals, the brazen altar, and then there was the bronze laver where the priest would come and wash and prepare to go into the next level, which was known as the holy place, and there was a gate that they'd enter there as well to go into the holy place, and in the holy place, you had the table of showbread, and you had the altar of incense, which stood just before the entrance to the innermost court, which was known as the holy of holies, and there dwelt the ark of God, where God's presence resided. Now, in the inner court, not everybody could go in.

Only Levites who were appointed to the priesthood were allowed to go into that second inner court and to carry out service to the Lord and to offer up incense to him every day. Then finally came the innermost court where the ark was, and there only one person was allowed to enter once a year, and he had to make sure that he took blood with him, otherwise God could have struck him dead. Holy of holies was where God's presence dwelt.

Now, over time, the tabernacle of David was no longer a portable structure because the Israelites were no longer wandering around in the desert. They'd come into a place of stability, and the tabernacle was just put in one particular spot, and one day the men from the army decided to take the ark with them into battle, thinking that that would allow them to win the battle because God's presence was with them, and we know that the ark was captured by the enemy, and for a long season the ark was kept in a place of keeping by somebody who was taking care of it. We don't need to go into those details, not important to what we're doing, but King David went to bring the ark back again, and when he brought the ark back again, instead of putting the ark back in the tabernacle that was up there in its place of keeping, David set up a brand new tabernacle.

He built a special tent in which he placed the ark of God, and David changed the order of worship that took place in the tabernacle. You see, every day people would go in to the tabernacle, they would offer sacrifices, the priests would go in, they would offer incense, and then once a year the high priest would come to offer blood, but there was no music. David changed all of that.

He put the ark in a brand new tabernacle, a single tent, and he changed everything. Now Moses got the original pattern, and David asked God, what must I do with the ark? Okay, now God gave David a new pattern, for a new tabernacle, which would eventually be a fixed building known as the temple, which some Solomon was going to build. David got this pattern from God, by revelation.

In 1 Chronicles 28 19, he says, all this said David, the Lord Yahweh made me understand in writing, hey, David knew how to journal, by his hand upon me, all the works of this pattern. Now guess what David included in the pattern for the new temple? Now bear in mind, God gave him, God gave him this pattern. Included in that pattern for the temple was something that was not in the tabernacle, and that was the presence of music and singing.

So when Solomon eventually built the temple, according to the pattern that David had given, at the dedication of the temple there were singers, and they were musicians. And we're told in 2 Chronicles 5 13, and as the trumpeters and singers stood as one, to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the Lord Yahweh, and when they lifted up their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of music, and praised the Lord Yahweh saying, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever, that then the house of the Lord Yahweh was filled with a cloud. The cloud of God's presence and his glory came down, not only on the little ark that was sitting in the Holy of Holies, but filled the whole place, and all the priests fell under the power.

They couldn't stand to minister, because the cloud of God's glory just knocked them to the ground. Now David's tabernacle was universal. See up until then, only Gentiles, shall I say Gentiles, could only enter into the outer court.

They were allowed there. They could even come and offer sacrifices, but the innermost courts were confined only to God's chosen people, and in specific the Levites. David's tabernacle was open to everybody.

People could come there and watch the music and the singers, and come close to the tent where the ark of God was. Nobody had ever been able to get that close before. David's tabernacle is a picture of universality, in that there was no longer a limitation or a restriction as to who could gain access to the presence of God.

It now became available to everyone, Jews and Gentiles included. Now when Jesus died, he opened the way for everyone to access the presence of God, and David was actually pre-illustrating this in his tabernacle. Now you've probably heard of the tabernacle of David, and a lot of people out there claim that they're teaching on the tabernacle of David, and the emphasis is that the tabernacle of David is all about praise and worship, and it's almost like a secret teaching.

You've got to enroll in one of these special training courses to learn about the tabernacle of David, because it's secret, and people have got this secret revelation from God about what God's doing today in praise and worship, but it's not a secret. Today I'm going to tell you what the secret is, but actually the scripture already told us what the secret is. You probably never noticed this one.

It's in the book of Acts. After Peter had opened the door to the Gentiles with Cornelius' household, and it was a big problem in the church, because until then it was only Jews that were allowed to be Christians. Now suddenly God had opened the way for Gentiles.

They had to have a big get-together with all the leaders and say, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? Peter, you've messed things up for us. Peter, you're supposed to be a good Jew. What are you doing? So Peter had to show them that actually God led him to open the door for the Gentiles, also to be allowed in, to be part of the church.

So they had this big discussion and James, the brother of Jesus, who was a good staunch Jew, was actually the leader of the church in Jerusalem. After they spoke about it, he got it. He got it.

You kind of wonder whether he kept it, because later on he was sending people to go and question Paul bringing the Gentiles, question the fact that Gentiles were getting away with not having to circumcise or keep the Jewish laws. But at this point, good old James, he got revelation, and he got a very powerful revelation, and he quoted an Old Testament scripture about the tabernacle of David. So what it says in Acts 15, reading from verse 13, And after they held their peace, James answered, saying, Men and brothers, listen to me.

Simon has declared how God at the first visited the Gentiles to take out of them a people for his name, and to this agree the words of the prophets as it is written. After this, I will return and will build again the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down, and I will build again the ruins of it, and I will set it up. What is the tabernacle of David? The tabernacle of David is God making his presence available to all people, whosoever will may come.

And yes, it involves music, and it involves praise, because that was the main key feature that David added to his tabernacle. So now, under the new covenant, worship took on a new dimension. It wasn't there originally.

Under the old covenant. And David gave us a little bit of a hint on how this happens. In Psalm 100, verse 4, and you'll see a lot of other passages that say something similar.

You can even get some in the New Testament, but this is a key one. Psalm 100, verse 4 says, Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise. Be thankful to him, and bless his name.

The gate was the way you entered into the tabernacle. The courts were the different layers of the tabernacle. David says we now enter through the gates with thanksgiving, and we go into the courts, plural, with praise.

So we start with thanksgiving. That's how we enter the gates. The first level of worship is giving thanks.

And actually, you know what? It's more important than we realize, because a lot of people, they think they can stand outside the gates and praise. And they think God owes them something. They complain because God hasn't done what they wanted him to do.

They complain about all the problems in their life. And why doesn't the Lord do something about it? Well, I can tell you something. They're not even getting into the gate yet.

Because the gate starts with thanksgiving. The gate starts with looking at your life and your experiences, and begin to thank God for everything that you have. Oh, you know, somebody else's, they're doing so well, and me, I'm struggling financially.

Well, look at what you do have. Can you walk? Can you talk? You got hands? Your feet? You got the ability to do things? Can you see? Can you hear? You know, some people don't have some of those things. They've lost it.

You got so much to be thankful for. Never mind the fact that he's now saved us, and delivered us from darkness, and paved the way for us to go and spend eternity with him. And you could make a whole long list.

But you know, our memories are short sometimes. We forget about all the good things that God has done. We start majoring on all the bad things that Satan has done, not that God has done.

Oh, you know, why did the Lord allow this? Actually, he didn't. You did. Because you have authority in this earth.

And what you allow in this earth, God will allow. Because what you bind in earth will be bound in heaven. What you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

If Satan is loosed in your life in this earth, guess who loosed him? It wasn't the Lord. It was you. Now, I just feel I'm speaking to somebody today.

You got to learn to be thankful before you even get into the front door of experiencing the presence of God. Why don't you sit down and make a list of all the good things in your life? Compare yourself with other people who don't have some of those good things. Oh, you know, I'm not living in luxury.

I'm not driving a fancy car. You know how many people out there don't have cars? You know how many people out there are homeless? Thank God for what you have. Start with thanksgiving.

Oh, thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Lord. Thank you for everything that you've done.

Thank you for saving me. Thank you for redeeming me. Thank you for anointing me with your spirit.

Thank you for the privilege that I have to serve you. When you do that, you walk through those gates. And now you have access to the courts of the world.

The second stage becomes praise. Praise. Praise when we start telling the Lord how wonderful he is.

See, when we're thanking him, we're just being personal in what he's done for us. When we praise him, we start telling him how awesome he is, how wonderful he is, how beautiful he is. Oh, there's so many things that we can be taken up with who he is and what he is and how awesome he is.

That's only the second stage of worship. And when you do that, it takes you into the outer court. And what's in the outer court? The altar of sacrifice.

You want to experience God. You want to know his presence and his glory and his power. It's going to cost you.

There's a price to pay. He doesn't owe you anything. And if you'll pay the price and go past the altar of sacrifice, you're on your way to the next court, the inner court.

If you didn't start with thanksgiving, you couldn't move into praise. And if you don't spend the time in praise, you can't move to the next level of worship. Now, the third stage of worship has two parts to it.

The first one is when you walk into that holy place and now your praise becomes more specific. You're moving into a quieter place now. It's not the big, noisy outer court.

It's a small little room. It's very quiet. It's just a few lamps burning there.

You're all alone in the presence of the Lord. That's when you move into the third stage of your worship. And things start to get a little bit more quiet now.

And they start to become a bit more direct. And it's you and him alone. And you continue to praise him.

And your praise begins to transition into worship. Worship. What is worship? The word worship is actually in the original has a very significant intention.

Worship basically means to approach for the purpose of showing respect and affection. See, it usually involves bowing down and showing the person that you value them. It's what the dog does when he comes and he licks your hand.

See, there's got to be a movement. You got to make the move towards him. Now, worship has an even better picture.

You've all seen it in the movies. The man and the woman, they're getting together. They're talking with each other.

They both begin to feel something. They start to be drawn to each other. And you see it.

They get closer and closer and closer. And unless the movie has somebody interrupted at that point, you know what's coming? The kiss. See, that's worship.

It's just you and him alone getting closer and closer until there's the kiss. Usually after the kiss, it comes the third stage, the next stage, which means moving to the bedroom. Well, that's not a very good thing.

That's out of God's order. But for a husband and wife, it's perfectly normal and natural. Because what starts out as an expression of worship becomes something far more intimate and far more committed, where you commit yourself wholly now to one another.

And that's when you go through the final curtain into the innermost court, the Holy of Holies, where you and him are alone together in an intimate place in the spirit. And then you move into a place where you are totally surrounded with his glory. If you could have walked into the tabernacle of those days, there was no lamp in the tabernacle.

So how did the high priest know what he was doing when he walked in there? Ever thought about that? He didn't take a lamp with him. You have to fiddle around and feel where the ark was. I wondered about that until one day the Lord took me into the Holy of Holies in the spirit.

And I noticed the whole place was bright with a golden yellow. Because every board of the innermost court is lined with gold. And the light of his glory shone from the ark of the covenant.

The Holy of Holies was not in darkness. It was full of the light of his glory. And if you want to know the glory of God, you're going to have to move beyond thanksgiving and walking through the gates.

You're going to have to move beyond the sacrifice of praise. You're going to have to move beyond ordinary worship. Sometimes it takes a while to get there.

But there is a quicker way, which we'll be looking at shortly. Before Calvary, the disciples had a very limited access to Jesus. And Jesus was our access, or was their access, to the Father God himself.

Jesus said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. And so Jesus was their access to the presence of God. Well, John, he was a bit of a glutton for that.

He was kind of always lying on top of Jesus' chest there as close to him as he could get. But that's as close as he could get. Peter, I think, got a little bit closer, but I don't think he was quite as bold as John.

But he was one of the inner circle as well. So he knew Jesus pretty well. The other disciples, they kind of sat the other side of the table.

They were close to Jesus, but not that close, not that intimate. When Jesus did things alone, they took Peter, James, and John with him. They had a privileged position.

But after Calvary, Jesus said, I'm not going to leave you comfortless. I'm coming back to you again, guys. I'm coming back to you in the form of the gift of the Father, which he's promised you, who is the comforter.

The Holy Spirit will come to take my place. Now, since Calvary, every believer has a closer access to Jesus than what even John had. Why? Because we meet him in the spirit.

Physically, there was a limitation to the amount of access they could have, to the amount of love that they could show. But in the spirit, our intimacy and our love goes deeper even than the sexual relationship in marriage, because it's not physical. It's far deeper than the spiritual.

We enter into a closer relationship with him than what Peter and John and the early disciples had, because of the comforter. Now, this is the tabernacle of David. We come into his presence with music and singing.

And that gives us very quick access to the inner courts, far quicker access than normal. And we can progress very quickly through the courts, right up into the innermost courts. Music and singing add a dimension.

And I've shared in our first teaching in this series on how the fact that music brings a resonance in spirit, soul, and body. Well, do you realize the tabernacle is within you? Do you realize that your body is the outer court and your soul is the inner court and your spirit is the Holy of Holies, where the Holy Spirit dwells now? Now we come using music and song. We come into the inner tabernacle, which lives inside of us.

Can you see that? Isn't that wonderful? We have the tabernacle within us. We ourselves are built on the same model as the tabernacle. And now we can come with music and with song, and we can come with a new gift that God has given us, the ability to speak in tongues, which totally bypasses our mind and taps straight into our spirit, where the Holy of Holies is, where Jesus himself waits for us in the spirit.

And so we can come through praise and worship into his presence. We can get there very quickly. In your private prayer time, you can come very quickly into the presence of the Lord.

Now, if you're a prophet, you should have learned this, because prophets excel in this. But you don't have to be a prophet to experience this, because it is available to every single believer. So there is a level of privacy just between you and him.

And it's following the same orders that David laid out in his tabernacle. When you spend time in prayer with the Lord, what do you do? You come on your prayer list. Lord, these are my needs.

These are my desires. This is what I want. You're not getting in the gate.

You're not getting in the gate. Your prayer time should always start with thanksgiving. After thanksgiving, you begin to praise him.

But you know, there's only so many things you can say in English. Lord, I praise you. I thank you.

Lord, you're wonderful. Lord, you're awesome. You're beautiful.

Lord, you... Any more ideas? Any more adjectives that I can use? See, when I run out of adjectives to describe him and tell him how wonderful he is, the comforter takes over, and I begin to speak to him in other tongues. And I begin to say things that I don't know what I'm saying, but I know that in the Spirit, I'm speaking directly to him, and I'm worshiping him. I'm praising him using other tongues.

Now, you don't have to do it just with speaking. Because if you add music to it, something supernatural, something wonderful begins to take place. Have you ever started to pray and you feel like the Lord's a thousand miles away? And you talk, talk, talk, talk, but you feel like you're talking to the walls? You feel like your prayer is getting no further than the ceiling? Well, how do we break through that? Music, folks.

Music and song has the power to lift you right up into the heavenly realm. You say, well, I'm not really a very good musician or singer. Well, you know, if you've got a musical instrument, you can actually begin to enter into that place while playing it.

If you can play a guitar, which was really what David had. David had his lyre, which was a mini harp, which is actually today's guitar. David worshiped with a guitar.

He said, I wish I could be like David and worship the Lord and write songs. Why didn't you learn to play the guitar? You could do that anytime. I can play the guitar with my eyes closed.

I know where the chords are. Hallelujah. Praise you, Lord.

You know what? I start making up a song using different chords and sounds. And what happens? My spirit comes to life. My soul begins to be filled with joy and the presence of the Lord.

And when I run out of words, I still have the ability to sing in tongues. The Lord says, I'll sing with my mind and I'll sing with my spirit. What's he speaking about? He's speaking about singing in tongues.

When I come to singing in tongues, I don't run out of words. And actually, it's very easy to write songs in the spirit because you don't have to worry about which chords you're going to play. You just begin to sing.

Instead of saying, praise you, Lord. Thank you, Jesus. I sing.

And you know, I'll do that for hours. Sometimes it feels so good, you can go hours. You can go on and on and on, on and on.

And you know, while you're doing that, your mind is still fully alert and active. Because it doesn't come through your mind, it comes through your spirit. And as in the spirit, you begin to worship him and praise him.

He actually begins to speak back to you in your mind. Even while you're singing. I've done amazing things while singing in tongues.

I've acted things out in the spirit while singing in tongues. I've done complete operas with my crummy voice while singing in tongues. And you know what, I felt like I was one of these big classical singers.

The angels joined in, and I sang with them in the heavenly choir. It was awesome. I've acted things out in the spirit while singing in tongues.

In fact, I've had amazing experiences with the Lord, just while singing in tongues. And you know, sometimes you find yourself making up a song in the spirit. And you feel it flow, the same lines over and over again.

What an awesome song. You wish you had your recorder handy, as you could have recorded it, because afterwards it's gone. It's gone.

It was for the moment. For the moment only. What did you do? You ended his gates with thanksgiving.

You ended his courts with praise. And then you began to move into worship. And as you spent more time doing that, he began to draw you into that secret place of the Holy of Holies.

If you maintain that long enough, he will appear. During one of my times of waiting on him, spending every day, hours, worshiping him in the spirit and praying, one day he suddenly stood before me in vision, and I got to meet Jesus face to face in the spirit. And I began to develop a relationship with him, a love relationship that was stronger than any love relationship I've had with anybody in this world, including my wife.

It was deeper and more intimate to where I was so in love with him that I'd get butterflies in my stomach just thinking about him. See, that opened a door for me to move into a new realm in the spirit. It opened doors for me to move into new realms of ministry, where Jesus would be by my side when I ministered to others, and I could ask him questions and get direction from him even while ministering.

Well, if that's what you want, it's available to you. Some of you haven't even gone through the door yet. You just spend the time praying, bringing your requests, then you've got nothing more to pray about.

Just come and worship him. Just worship him. Tell him how much you love him.

And after a while, you'll hear his voice, and he'll say, I love you. Can I do something for you? Can I do something for you? Is there something you want? Can I bless you? He will then begin to offer you some of the things that probably you didn't even feel worthy to ask for. He'll start telling you he's going to give you some of those deep things that were in your heart that you probably thought, well, you know, maybe that would be a bit arrogant for me to ask him for that.

There are so many believers. They want to try and find the secret to answered prayer. You know what the secret to answered prayer is? Worship.

God made you for worship. He created you for this very purpose. You can do this, folks.

You can do this, and you can do it privately, personally, between you and him, and you can develop a relationship and an increase of the anointing presence of God in your life. Now, we have a term for the kind of anointing that you experience when you move through these phases of the inner tabernacle. We call it the internal anointing.

Those who have studied our school of the supernatural, you'll know what I'm talking about. It's the anointing that dwells within you by the indwelling Holy Spirit. And by the internal anointing, we learn to experience his love and his presence.

We experience healing of the hurts of the past and all the hang-ups that we have in life as we come into an intimate relationship with him. But there is another place where we come in praise and worship. Now, most people have never thought of praise and worship as being an intimate, personal thing that we do.

But that's what God made man for. He made us so that we could fellowship with and worship him every day, all day. You can be in that sense of worship throughout the day.

At any moment, you can stop and say, praise you, Lord. Thank you, Jesus. I worship you.

Here, just like that, you feel his presence. Music has that power. Well, if you're busy working, you could put on some recordings, perhaps of music and worship, and that can help keep you in that place of worship, in his presence.

But if you could spend a large part of your day, and ultimately, 24 hours a day in his presence and in worship, only then are you really fulfilling what you were made to do. It becomes a place for public worship. It becomes a place where we get together with other believers and begin to praise him together, to thank him together.

And actually, it is an essential part of bringing the presence of God into a group. Now, if you've attended any church meeting, and you belong to a church, I'll guarantee that the first part of the meeting involves singing and praise. Now, I know we can change the order, but it's not often we have the preacher stand up at the beginning, preach his sermon, and then say, okay, guys, now we're going to have our time of praise and worship.

No. Why? Because praise and worship brings the presence of God and his anointing into the meeting and into everybody in the group. See, Jesus is dwelling inside you by the comforter.

And when you worship him, you reach in to experience him and to praise him and to worship him. But there comes a public experience. And when we do that, we come into a different court.

We come into the courtroom of the king's palace that is known as the throne room, where the king sits on his throne. And we don't come alone. There's always crowds of people there.

It's never alone. There's a whole lot of people out there wanting an audience with the king at the same time as you. And so when we come together in a group, we can enter into the throne room of the king.

Now, not many people are even aware of the throne room of the king, which the Bible calls the throne of grace. But the scripture says we can come boldly to the throne of grace to receive help in time of need. It took a while for the Lord to show me the throne of grace and what it looks like and how I can enter into it.

And I remember the first time I walked into the throne room, I saw him there sitting on the throne. It was kind of like either being in a large church or being in a party or a place where people are singing and dancing. The floor was filled with people, all active.

They were dancing. They were singing. They were raising their hands.

They were worshiping him as he sat on the throne. That's a glorious sight to see. And as I walked in there, I became part of the crowd.

But right in the middle of it, Jesus looked up and he pointed at me. And I knew he noticed me. Even though I was in the crowd, I still had that intimate, personal relationship with him.

And he still cared enough about me to give me whatever need I had as I came into his presence. Now, when you add music and song to public praise and worship, you experience a different kind of anointing. You experience an anointing that we call the external anointing, where the power of God begins to come down upon you from the outside.

The first time you experience that, we call it the baptism of the Holy Spirit. But we continue to have experiences where we are refilled with the Spirit, where God's anointing comes upon us, where we can tangibly feel his presence on us. Now, that's what should happen in public worship.

Now, when I come into public worship, I'm not coming to speak in tongues because nobody knows what I'm talking about. And Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 14, you know, don't come speaking in tongues in public because nobody can stand in agreement with you. We have these prophets who spend hours every day in the presence of the Lord speaking in tongues.

And they come into public worship and they want to do it in tongues. And you can get away with it in the crowd. But you know what? You've actually separated yourself from the others.

And while you do that, you will remain in the internal anointing and never experience the external anointing. I've made the same mistake in singing and in worship. I remember at one of our very first conferences, we were so used to, as a small group, would play and sing together and just get into his presence together and sing in tongues together.

And now we stood up there to worship the Lord and we all got there into the secret place together. And the people were standing there staring at us. See, that's not the time for the internal.

Now, you may very easily get into that when you come into the public meeting and you can have your little worship time all by yourself there. That's not the idea. The idea is to worship corporately as a group.

And when you do that, you combine together the anointings that are within you. You combine all the internal anointings that you've developed in your private times of worship and prayer and praise. And you add them to everybody that's there and you get a very powerful presence of God.

Some people have called that the corporate anointing. We should experience something different in our public worship to what we do in our private worship. And through worship, in both cases, you can experience the anointing of God, both at the internal level and at the external level.

And you can get there very quickly using praise and worship. Why? Because this is the tabernacle of David. This is what opens the way wide for you to come closer to God and to experience him.

You say, well, you know, I don't have much of a singing voice. Most people don't, but actually everybody can sing. And in a public meeting, you can sing.

Probably nobody can even hear you anyway, because the music's usually loud. That's not a problem. You can sing and worship the Lord.

If you have an aspiration to be more actively involved in that and to be part of the praise team that's up there, well, then you're going to have to go a bit further and you're going to have to develop your musical abilities and your singing abilities. You say, well, you know, I wasn't born with a good singing voice. You know that the Levites were given the job of playing the music and doing the singing in the tabernacle and in the temple.

And do you know that Levites were not born with good singing voices just because they were Levites? Strangely enough, David had appointed something like 4,000 of them. You suppose all 4,000 were born with natural musical skills? No. No.

They had to be trained. They had a leader. His name was Hananiah.

And the scripture says he had skill. He was born with a singing voice, obviously. He could do it well.

But you know what? It says he was training the others. Because he was so skilled, he trained the others how to sing. He taught them how to do it better.

See, God didn't say, hey, you, you, you, Mr. Levite, come and sing. No, I can't sing. I don't care.

Come sing. Can you imagine what a cacophony it must have sounded like around the ark? Each person singing out of key. No, they were trained.

They were trained how to sing. They were trained how to play. And David spoke about playing skillfully and singing skillfully.

You know, when you're on your own with the Lord, it doesn't matter if you're out of key. It's only you and him. And you're doing it for him.

And you know what? He's not bothered by it. He loves your praise and your worship. But when we come into the public place, it's going to be a little bit different.

You know, the worship bands are getting bigger and bigger these days. But they weren't as big as what they were in David's day. In the temple, when the musicians and the singers stood to sing, there weren't just a handful of them.

There was a crowd. And we've lost our idea of having the church choir now, haven't we? That's old fashioned. Early churches had a whole choir.

They had special seats at the front who would sing and lead the worship. You know what? They were trained. I know that for a fact.

I grew up under a father who was a choir leader. And I watched my dad train each one of the people who sang in the choir. In time, I inherited his ability.

And as a young person, as a youth leader, I gathered around me all the young people who were interested in singing. And I taught them as I saw my father do. I taught each one of them to sing their part in the choir.

And we actually became quite famous. Our pastor would often call us up off the cuff. He would stand up there and say, we don't have a song item tonight.

Brother Les, do you think the youth choir could come and give us a song? And I'd say, sure. We'd all walk up there. And everybody would say, well, we're going to sing.

I'm still trying to decide as we get up there. Because I'd trained them and we had a whole repertoire of songs that we could sing. And then we'd get up there and say, OK, guys, we're going to sing this song.

OK, you know your part. You know your part. Let's do it.

And we'd sing. It was such a blessing. Man, music should be an important part of your life.

Why? Because worship, worship should be a way of life for you. And there is no better way to worship than with music and with song. If you want to enter into a greater dimension of experiencing the presence and the power of God, it's called the sacrifice of praise.

Well, what are you going to sacrifice? Are you prepared to sacrifice the time to sit down and learn the theories of music? To sit down and learn the chords that you play on a guitar and how to strum it? Are you going to be bothered to spend the time to sit down and have somebody who can sing, teach you how to take this crabby voice that you have and use it to make beautiful sounds for the Lord? It can't be done. Unfortunately, in our modern church, most of the time we wait for those that already have a passion or a skill. And unfortunately, it is also still believed by so many that God gives some people a skill and others he doesn't.

So you were blessed. God gave you the skill of music. Well, he didn't give it to me.

I spent months learning each one of the instruments that I play. It cost me time and blood, sweat and tears to get there. It didn't fall on me.

Singing was even worse because I was not born with a natural singing voice by any means. And how much money I spent on singing lessons and tutorials and CDs and singing courses to try and improve my voice. It's taken many years to get it to where it is now.

What price have you paid? Well, you know, I really don't have time to play music. You better find time to worship. If you intend to experience everything that God has for you.

And if you want to worship effectively, you need to add music and singing to your worship. God willing, we're going to be launching a school of music and song. What I'm preaching today is going to be one of the lectures.

I'm taking my opportunity on Sundays to add a few and there'll be a lot more will be added afterwards. And with the Lord's help, we're going to go beyond that. We're going to take those who want to learn to play music, starting with the guitar and the piano keyboard.

Teach you how to play. Don't have to be a virtuoso musician, but you just need to play enough that you can accompany somebody, specifically yourself, as you sing. And if you can't sing, well, I spent years trying to take this whole voice of mine and make it better.

I think I've learned a few tricks along the way, which I can teach you. And I'm sure God will raise up others who like him and I probably already have the skill and can teach you even more. We're going to ask God to bring in the right people.

We're going to get it going. We're going to teach you how to play music and how to sing and how to worship God. And we're going to learn to get into his presence and bring the glory of God down upon this earth and into the body of Christ.

Now, you can daily experience the presence of the Lord and his love. You can do it by entering the courts of his tabernacle inside of you. You can start by coming into his presence with thanksgiving, and then you can start to praise him.

You can start with words in English, and then you can move into words in other tongues, and then you could add music to make it even more powerful. As often as you do this, you will enter into the innermost courts, and eventually you'll come to that place of deep intimacy with Jesus. And then he'll begin to tell you secrets that are for your ears.

Only this is where all true prophetic ministry begins, and prophetic ministry is available to every single child of God, not just those that are called to the prophetic office. Then to experience his power, make sure that you get together with other believers, and that you take time to worship together. You don't have to belong to a megachurch to do this.

You can do this in a little home church. You can do this with your own family. Of course, you may have to learn the guitar first, because that's the most portable instrument.

And you can sit there in your lounge, and you can play, and everybody can join in, and you can have a glorious time of worship, and the power of God will come down, and you'll experience his external anointing right there. Because he said, where two or three are gathered together, there I am in your midst. It's never, ever let go this powerful tool of music and song, which are available to you as a human being and a child of the Lord.

Don't ever forget you were created to worship. If you are not doing it, you're going to end up like Adam and Eve, going their own way, partaking of the wrong tree, and losing all the blessings that the Lord has for you. Now, I know you are not such a person.

I know that you want to experience the full blessings of the Lord. I know you want to experience a greater dimension of his anointing. And perhaps until now you thought it was not possible, but I want to tell you it is possible, and you can learn to play, and you can learn to sing, and you can learn to experience the fullness of his power.

And if you desire it, you shall. It's God's grace we're going to help you. You need help, we're going to be there for you, take you to that new level in the Lord.

Amen. Thank you, Father, for your word. Thank you for each one that heard it, Lord.

Thank you for their receptivity. Thank you for stirring up in your people right now, the desire to move more into this powerful force of music that you've given us. To take those vocal chords that you gave them and use them for your glory, Lord.

To learn to sing beautiful music for you, to glorify you and lift you up in this world and the sight of others. I ask you, Lord, that you will provide the resources that we need to set this up, and that you'll give us opportunity to teach and to train many to tap into it and walk in the fullness of it. I know this is your will, Lord, because you gave it to me, and therefore I ask according to your will, and I believe that my prayer shall be answered, and you shall do just that.

Thank you for it in Jesus name. Amen.

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