Dr. Mark Virkler introduced me to the term "throne room worship." Though I have done what throne room worship is, I had never specifically termed it as such. Recently I was at a seminar where Mark taught briefly on throne room worship. This was a 3 day seminar at Singing Waters Ministries where I am the worship leader.  He asked this question. “During worship, where are you looking?”  After people gave a few responses, he summed it up by saying, “We can be staring at the lyrics on the screen, or at the back of the person’s head in front of us, or we can be looking to the Lord, fixing our eyes on Jesus, coming into His throne room with all of Heaven and the angels and saints.”

When Mark said this, I agreed wholeheartedly.  As I prepared for the next worship session, a spontaneous thought came to mind and I knew that the Lord was leading how I would lead worship in the next session. I thought that it would be good to be very deliberate on having a throne room worship session.  We did that and it went very well.  So well in fact, that Mark came to me and asked me to write up this blog on throne room worship.

I will sum up what Mark taught on throne room worship and add a few of my own thoughts. I will then discuss practically the nuts and bolts of how the throne room worship session went.

The eyes of our heart

How do we actually approach God’s throne room? We picture God’s throne room in our mind’s eye or as Paul describes in Ephesians 1:18 using “the eyes of your heart”. Through the images we see in our mind’s eye we actually enter into those experiences. 

Hebrews 4:16 is helpful to give us some insight into throne room worship.

Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.  

Let us

To say "let us" means:  I choose to do this.  I make a deliberate effort to do this.

And it is us.  Let’s do this together.  We enter as one, but we also enter together. It is corporate.  We enter into worship together. 

Approach

We approach.  We move.  We go from where we are to someplace else.  I often picture myself walking into His throne room.  Sometimes I will walk through a door.  I will walk up slowly but also confidently.

Confidence and boldness

We are to approach His throne confidently, or boldly as one translation says. This is for all of us.  We need that assurance that this is for us and we need to put on confidence. Why do we need to put on confidence and boldness?  Because many of us are not confident! We need to choose to be confident.

Faith

We gain confidence and boldness through faith. Hebrews 11:6 says “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to God must believe that He exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him”.  Without faith we won’t approach God.  We must believe that He wants us to approach Him.  To come to God we must believe. If we are not coming to God, it may because we are not believing He wants us to come and to meet with us.

Throne of Grace

Notice the description of the throne.  It’s a throne of grace. It’s important to understand that we are approaching a throne of grace.  If we think we are approaching a throne of judgement we may not want to come close.  But it is a throne of grace.  Grace for us! 

We receive mercy and grace

We should come boldly knowing that God loves to lavish his mercy and grace upon us.  This mercy and grace comes in many ways, but often as we are in the throne room, we will see revelations that will transform us.

Some Practical Steps For A Throne Room Worship Experience

Here’s what I did for leading the throne room worship time. 

Instruct the people what we are going to do

I began by saying, “Today we are going to have a throne room worship experience.  As we begin, please open the eyes of your heart to picture the scriptures that are being read.  You can see yourself coming before God’s throne. We are seated with Him in heavenly places.  You can see that now with the eyes of your heart.

Song selection

Certain songs are best suited for throne room worship; songs that are based on verses in revelation work well but there are many Psalms that are full of pictures and will work as well.

Our worship set was to be about 30 minutes.  I chose only one song: "Worthy of It All" by David Brymer

All the saints and angels, bow before your throne.  All the elders cast their crowns before the Lamb of God and sing. You’re worthy of it all.  Worthy of it all.  For from You are all things and to you are all things. You deserve the glory. Day and night, night and day let incense arise.  Day and night, night and day, let incense arise.

Musical arrangement

I asked the keyboard player to play a thick pad.  The first two chords of this song are C and D.  I lightly strummed the C and D chords while the keys played the pad.  The drums were very light and the bass didn’t yet play.

Scripture

As we played, I opened in prayer and said, “Today we will have a throne room worship experience.  Could someone please read Revelation 4 slowly?   Please read it slowly.”

Often I will read these Scriptures myself or have one of our team members read the Scripture.  It’s important that the person reading it is picturing the Scripture.  You can often tell when someone is simply reading a Scripture and when someone is picturing and entering into and experiencing the Scripture themselves.

Even though I had asked for a volunteer to read the Scripture slowly, the volunteer began reading the Scripture much too quickly.  I interrupted her and said, “Sorry to interrupt but I need you to read that at about ¼ the speed of what you are reading.”  It was awkward to interrupt the lady, but so necessary. The risk I took in asking someone from the congregation to read the Scripture instead of doing it myself was well worth it.

In 1 Corinthians 14:26 it says “when you come together each of you has a hymn, or a word or instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation”  There is great value when all are participating in worship.  I will often ask people to read Scriptures or pray during our worship times.  This helps take the focus off the stage and makes our worship more corporate. Everyone gets to play.  When I ask people to participate they become more engaged and it makes our worship experiences so much richer and corporate.

Posture

While the Scripture was being read and we were playing, I kneeled.  Posturing our body, postures our hearts.  Come let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker - Psalm 95:6  Many times when I am leading worship I ask people to kneel.  This helps us join our bodies to what we are seeing in our mind’s eye and experiencing. 

Worship is not only an individual act but it is a corporate act.  “Let us”  In other words, “come on everyone, this is what we are now going to do together!” Scripture is full of leadership in worship, many Scriptures that say “let us”.  I have found that there are several times that I have  taken very direct leadership in worship leading and found it to be very meaningful and significant.  I have often asked people to kneel in worship, or to come to the front to bring an offering, to shout, to pray, to dance. 

For this worship set, instead of asking everyone to stand at the beginning, I said, "Please sit or kneel as we posture our bodies in line with what we are experiencing."  I instructed everyone that we would read the Scripture and play some instrumental worship and have time for people to interact directly with God in the throne room.  Sitting also allowed people to journal.  I said, “You may want to take out your journals and journal your experience and journal what God is communicating to you.”

Singing

Playing the C and D chords repeatedly and the reading of the Scripture took about 10 minutes. We then began to sing the worship song.  I had instructed the keyboard player to keep the pad for the first few times through the song but then to switch to a piano sound for the rest of the song.  This took the song to the next level.  We sang for about 5 – 7 minutes.

Free singing and prophetic singing

After singing the song, we continued the chord progression of the chorus.  I sang in tongues and many others did.  My wife sang some prophetic words. I saw many people taking out their journals and journaling.

I made sure that my playing was softer during this time, giving room for the keyboard player, and also making sure that free singing and prophetic singing could be heard.

The whole set was about 25 minutes and was significant for many of us.

Let me add a few more thoughts on this topic.

I mentioned at the beginning of this blog that Mark taught that there are 3 places we can look during worship: at the words on the screen, at the back of someone’s head, or at God’s throne.  Let me add one more place that I believe many of us, and many churches are looking these days in worship: the worship team! 

I am concerned with the large amount of attention, focus and accolades we put on worship teams these days.  It’s a strange phenomenon what has happened in our church cultures over the past 40 years. For generations, the song leaders played servant roles.  Today in many of our churches, the worship leader and team have become rock stars!  I’m afraid many of us in worship ministry are like the donkey carrying Jesus and we forget who people are looking at. Satan himself was a worship leader who I believe forgot who was being worshipped.

And also we as the congregation have turned our services into concerts evaluating how good or bad “the anointing” was or wasn’t. I’ve had to remind myself sometimes to simply worship regardless of the quality of the worship team, or the music, or whether I like the song or not, whether I am visiting another church or even when I am leading.  I am convinced that there are some times where God allows hiccups in our music to remind us that worship is way beyond our music and a lot less to do with us as worship leaders and musicians, than we sometimes think.

God's Perspective Revealed Through a Dream

The Lord brought this message home to me very clearly several years ago through a dream.  In this dream I was in church participating in worship sitting in the congregation while another worship leader and team led worship.  In my thoughts I was criticizing the worship team, “This song is too slow.  Why did they choose this song?  The drums are too loud... “ and on it went.  The problem was that there was a microphone plugged into the side of my head and every thought I had was being broadcast over the P.A.!  I woke up shocked at the dream and said, “Lord!”  He responded, “Well, that’s the way I hear it!”  The offering rising to heaven from many of our churches each Sunday often sounds like this in heaven: “How great is our God and how mediocre is our worship team today, not as good as the way it is done on Youtube…”

I feel so strongly about this issue now.  In Psalm 133:1 it says that “where brothers dwell together in unity, there God commands a blessing!”  God commands blessing when we join together as one in worship: corporate worship.  I want to make our worship times as corporate as possible, for there the Lord commands a blessing.

It doesn’t help when some of our churches turn the lights down in the congregation and put spot lights on the worship team.  Talk about putting the focus on the wrong place! Let’s just sing the songs, and worship the Lord, people!  Stop looking at the worship team!  Look to Jesus!

Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase ‘the medium is the message’ meaning that the methods or media that we use to convey a message actually convey a message.  This is true today in our churches. I understand why many churches want to appear hip and cool and appealing to the younger generation with spotlights on the worship team, smoke filling the stage and a darkened seating area for the congregation, but many churches may not realize that messages are being conveyed through the methods or media we are using.  We are conveying the message, “look at the worship team!” We are saying that’s it’s OK to hide in the dark because the worship experience is a one-on-one encounter with you and God.  Yes, it is a one-on-one encounter with you and God, but it is not only that!  Forgetting the corporate-ness of worship makes our worship self centred, me focused.

The songs we select can also reflect this self-centeredness.  When I choose songs, I make sure to include songs that have universal appeal, that involve throne room experiences, that speak to the majesty and mystery of God.   I want to make sure that the worship sets I select do not have a too high percentage of songs that describe personal interactions that the songwriter has had with God.  Though these personal interaction songs are good, too many of them can contribute to a worship culture that becomes too me-focused instead of God focused.

The volume we set for our worship sets can also convey a message.  Is the most important thing about our worship times, that we can hear beautiful music?  If so, the music will probably be quite loud.  But if our goal is to corporately come together and worship, the music volume will be lower because we will value the sound volume of the people in the congregation   I like good quality and sometimes loud music myself, but the times that I can hear the congregation singing are very moving.  Please, pastors, worship leaders, and sound technicians, ask yourselves “Are there times when I can hear the people singing?”  I hope so, as this is a powerful way to lead people into worship. Hearing people singing makes us corporate.  When we corporately worship we have powerful encounters with the Lord.

To have a throne room worship set as described here is one type of worship set, but the principle of opening our eyes to see into the throne room can be used in any style of worship service, whether traditional hymns or joyful dance or anything in between.  We are to look to Jesus. That is not only a metaphor. Our worship times are an ideal time to literally look to Jesus.

Jeff and Cheryl Duncan are on part time staff at Singing Waters Ministries, a Christian healing and training centre just outside Toronto.  Jeff has been a worship leader for many years.  He was the worship leader in John and Carol Arnott’s first church in Stratford, Ontario before the Toronto Blessing.