Today's chapter is about how I can please God through my worship. This is about how I worship. Not as in what method I use to worship Him, but what is my motive. Am I worshiping with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength? God wants me to worship Him as He revealed Himself to us in the Bible. We cannot just create our own comfortable, or politically correct image of God and worship it. That's idolatry. Am I worshiping the God I want, or the God who IS?
God also looks at my heart when I worship, not my words. If I am being genuine in my heart, God won't care if I am sitting, kneeling, prone, or standing with my arms outstretched. That was hard for me, I was raised Catholic and prayer was worship and it was ritualistic. I've since learned that many things are worship, and just recently that everything I do can be an act of worship.
God wants my worship to be thoughtful. For years growing up, after confession I was told to say X number of "Our Father"s and X number of "Hail Mary"s and my sins would be forgiven. I can remember times I spent going bead by bead around my Rosary, each bead had one of those prayers assigned to it. It was repetitious, boring, and it wasn't worship. My worship these days is more specific, even if I do still use the Our Father as my basic prayer.
But prayer is only a small part of my worship to God. Practical worship pleases God. It involves sacrifice. Practical is worship is many different things. (thanksgiving, praise, humility, repentance, offerings of money, prayer, serving others, and sharing with those in need.) Again, it's not doing these things to draw attention to myself, it's to draw attention to God. That is what took me a few days to figure out with the blog. I thought that the more people reading and commenting made this form of worship better. But,I cannot exalt God and myself at the same time.
I tried the exercises in this chapter, it wasn't easy. Praising God without using the same old words, that was a challenge. Being specific was a little bit easier because I've been learning to pay more attention to Him in my everyday world. I even looked up the Matt Redman song Heart of Worship. I truly desire my life to be a living sacrifice, I used to not know what that meant, even though I've said it, and sang it. I'm starting to understand it better now.
The Bible verse is from the Gospel of Mark:
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.Today's question is this: Which is more pleasing to God right now- my public worship, or my private worship? What will I do about this? Wow, that's a hard one to answer, because I think in my public worship, it's obvious to the people around me how much I love God. I think it is anyway. My public worship is honest, and heartfelt. This blog is both a form of public and private worship, and I'm hopeful that it is pleasing to God. So I guess the answer is that my public worship is more pleasing than my private worship. I need to spend more time worshiping God in ways that are not as obvious to everyone else. I need to raise my family as a form of worship, work as a form of worship, and reflect more on His word.
Mark 12:30 (NIV)
Remember:God wants all of me.
Sorry that took longer than I wanted it to. While I was writing I needed to stop and spend time with one of my sons who was being left out of some other 'reindeer games' going on in my house.
ReplyDeleteI have watched, and believe your life is becoming "all worship."
ReplyDeleteAs you grow, the lines between public and private are become less defined, and that is true worship, a heart of worship...that knows no difference between the two!
Keep growing.
Thank you Mike, that means a lot to me.
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