Spiritual Practices: Worship
Worship is the full-time offering of ourselves to God’s glory. Worship is not a form or order that we do, it is the work of our hands, the thoughts of our hearts. It is not the song, it is not the gathering together, it is our spirit reaching out for God’s Spirit.
Worship is based on worth-ship or showing the worth of God in our lives. Our every action and whole being show the worth that God is to us. He is the object of our worship and therefore, our lives. Ironically, Matt Redman had it right when he said, “I'll bring You more than a song/ For a song in itself/ Is not what You have required/ You search much deeper within/ Through the ways things appear/ You're looking into my heart” (Listen to the song.)
Worship is disappointing to God when it is not done with our hearts in the right place, as Redman’s song seems to confess. Isaiah 1 described the forms, or even formulas, of worship that the Israelites were practicing, but that all fell short of what God sought from them.
Romans 12:1 Describes it as “to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship.” This word sacrifice is a drawing near, choosing God over all else. That “else” is the issue – we are more often drawn to ourselves or our own desires, those of others and the draw of the world. So, what he sought and seeks today in his followers is that we draw near to him – sacrifice our whole being to be near to him in thought and deed.
The living sacrifice is in direct contrast to the limited deeds of worship described in the Old Testament, the sacrifice of a bull, grains, or blood. Those were empty until they were fulfilled by Jesus himself. But God’s desire for us to know his worth and acknowledge it remains unchanged. This living sacrifice points to the continual raising up of God in our lives, in everything we do and say.
We have adopted the word “worship” in our church services, and many picture hands raised and a nearly palpable presence of God in the service, saying that “we have entered his presence”. However, that kind of discussion encourages us to forget that we are always in the presence of God. We ever we go, we cannot hide from him, we cannot walk away from him. So, in our quiet desperation, in our carrying out our daily grind, in our singing and praising, all of it is worship to him. It is our decision what those actions say of the worth-ship of God in our lives.
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