Wednesday, September 07, 2005

A Matter of the Heart - The Practice of Worship

Come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our God our Maker. Psalm 95:6

Now, I will not pretend to be an expert on worship in fact my brother-in-law and sister would be more equipped to write a devotional on this topic. BUT, I am called to worship just as they have been called to worship.

Personal Worship helps us to re-align our focus on God daily: Psalms 34:1-3, Hebrews 13:15. Personal Worship prepares us for corporate worship. Consider this thought: �If you will not worship God seven days a week, you do not worship Him on one day a week.� A.W. Tozer God is looking for us to be his worshipers; Jesus declares �The true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him� John 4:23. In today�s society we can tend to worship other people and things, scripture tells us that we are only to worship God (Matt. 4:10). Today our focus on worship is not on how we do it, but that we are united spiritually with Him. Our worship must come from the heart, not from ritual or form. Rom. 12:1 clearly tells us that worship is more than singing, praising, and praying.

I am an advocate of service and ministry and fully believe in some way God has called us to serve. �Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. Then he says �Love your neighbor as yourself.� Mark 12:30-31. Clearly worship is first, service second. God is calling us back to worship � He is calling us back to focus on Him and not just on what we are doing for Him. Brother Lawrence wrote a wonderful book called �Practicing the Presence of God�. That is worship � placing our daily focus on Him through praise, adoration, and thanksgiving.

So, who do you worship? Where is your focus? Is it on yourself, your things, the world, on others, on what you do for him, or is it on Him?

LDJ

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