I’ve had the book, “The Unquenchable Worshipper”, by Matt Redman, for a long time, probably 5 or 6 years. But have never read it. I decided to read it. I think it’s going to be very educational, so I figured I’d write a few comments on each chapter.

Ch 1 - The Unquenchable Worshipper

Fanny Crosby wrote about 8,000 hymns of praise. She was blinded at about 6 weeks of age, so she’d basically been blind her whole life. When someone once asked her, “Fanny, do you wish you had not been blinded?” She replied, “Well, the good thing about being blind is that the very first face I see will be the face of Jesus.”

Now that’s somebody who knew how to worship God in both the good times and bad, and knew how to keep things in perspective. It’s no wonder she wrote that many praise hymns.

A fire needs 3 things to burn: heat, fuel, and oxygen. If you remove any 1 of those 3 from a fire, it will be extinguished. Worship can be compared to a fire. And if one of these following 3 things are missing from your life, worship can be extinguished.

  1. Like water can put out a fire, the pressures and trials of this life can dampen our heart of worship, if we let them. Clearly Fanny Crosby did not let her trials dampen her heart of worship. Neither did Paul or Silas in jail (Acts 16).
  2. Like a lack of oxygen can suffocate a fire, we can also quench the Holy Spirit. We can only worship by the Holy Spirit. But we can also grieve and/or quench the Spirit within us.
  3. The last way to put out a fire is to starve it from it’s fuel. Similarly, if we starve ourselves from spiritual nourishment, we will starve our worship. We need continued revelation from God, through sources like nature, bible study, prayer, fellowship, to name a few.

Another thing I never knew is this: Did you know that Jesus quoted 2 psalms while hanging on the cross? Psalms are songs of worship, which makes me wonder if just spoke them as shown in most movies, or actually sang them. King David wrote this in Psalm 22:1 - “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” That’s exactly what Jesus said on the cross. Do you think this was just a coincidence? I doubt it. Sounds like a strange line to a worship song, huh? I wonder how the tune went. Another Psalm of David is Psa 31. In verse 5, David wrote, “Into your hands I commit my spirit.” This is the last thing Jesus uttered from the cross, just before he died. These songs were obviously well known by Jesus, and the Jews at the foot of the cross. Could it be that the last thing Jesus did before He died was to worship God through song???