|
Psalm 95 Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. |
Can we say these words from our own hearts?
God is great and He deserves my praise - my highest praise. This praise has to come from the deepest part of me. It has to be from an awe-filled silent praise as well as our energetic singing to Him. Do we ever get to the point we are "on our faces" before Him? Or do we praise Him the same way we do other people? How could we possibly truly sense His awesome presence, and not fall to our knees with our face to the ground? Do we truly allow ourselves to acknowledge His greatness? Do we truly believe He is the creator of all we know...of all we will ever know? If we did, we could not be so haphazard and lax in our worship of Him!
"Worship is a human response to a divine revelation." God says and does things, and we respond to it.
Does that describe your worship times? Does it describe mine? Do we care what anyone else thinks as we are worshipping our Father? Is everything around us blocked out except Him? When He touches us, how could we be aware of anything or anyone else?
Oh, that our worship would magnify Him! Our worship should be enlarging our horizons and changing our perspective beyond our self-imposed fences of our own limitations. It should cause us to see life through His eyes.
In worshiping Him, our fears would be forgotten and our spirits refreshed. A bold confidence would grow in our hearts as He surrounds and fills us. He would satisfy our thirst and renew us!
Let us pray that our worship will be from all that we are! Let us pray that our work will be enhanced because we have truly worshipped Him! He has given us the tremendous gift of music, a medium that has a special dimension for us in worshipping Him. Our times of worship ought to give us a new song in our hearts that will protect it and keep it from drying up.
He seeks our worship!
|
Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." (John 4:23-24 NIV)
|
Our worship needs to be always in keeping with His Word. It is to be in spirit with the depth of out emotions and our love for Him. It is to involve our hearts as well as our heads!
He has provided many acts of worship in His Word from the beginning to the end!
|
In
the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil
as an offering to the LORD. But Abel brought fat portions from
some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favor
on Abel and his offering, He
said to his servants, "Stay here with the donkey while I
and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will
come back to you." (Gen 22:5 NIV)
|
From these alone we can see how to worship Him - in obedience!
From Abraham’s example, we learn that any sacrifice we make to Him is an act of worship. How else could he have been able to to take his own son to sacrifice if it were not that he was going to worship His God? How could he withhold anything from Him who had given him all things? Do we have that mindset when He asks us to give anything back to Him? Do we even realize it is an act of worship, or do we robotically hand over a tithe or whatever He has asked of us? Oh, how very different it would be if we truly let go of all He asks us to as an act of worship! There would be no room for worry or self-pity! There’s be no room for second thoughts! We’d be on our faces handing it all over to Him with a song in our hearts!
Even in the midst of great suffering we can worship him. We have such a tender example in Job. He lost everything through no fault or choice of his own. He was miserable with grieve and sicker than any of us have ever been, and yet, we find him praising God and worshipping Him! And how many times do we let hurt feelings or worries or fatigue interfere with our worship times, and feel justified in doing so? Shame on us!
Let us commit to being active participants in worship to Him every day! Let us feel free to sing out to Him in praise anywhere at anytime. Let us seek out others to share in corporate worship!
And in our daily lives, let us truly know what it means to offer our bodies as living sacrifices to Him as an act of worship! (Rom 12:1) May everything we do for Him and His kingdom be done as an act of worship. Can you imagine how our attitudes towards many things would have a radical change?
Oh, Father, I pray that my personal worship will be ignited by Your fire and that it will be deep and consistent. If there is anything stealing my joy and sucking the life out of my worship, open my eyes to it, and remove it from me! I want nothing to hinder my praise
Copyright 2000 PowerPraise