This is the 14th instalment in an on-going multi-part series on Genuine Worship. Click here to subscribe to the podcasts so you can listen to these messages anytime and anywhere throughout the day on your iPod, Mac, Pc, iPad, and so on.
I’m sharing my insight into the mystery of worship with you through these posts and podcasts for two main reasons:
1. To help you understand what worship really is. I hope that this series will inspire a change in your attitude towards worship.
2. I also hope that you will be inspired to change how you worship God.
My objective in sharing these insights would have been met if you not only understood what worship really is, but if your practice of the same becomes radically altered as well.
Abraham became the father of many nations and religions: the Jews, the Arabs, the Christians, the Moslems. Billions of earthlings today belong either to the ethnicity of Abraham, or to his religion. That’s an extraordinary blessing. And it all happened because he worshipped his God in spirit and in truth. He became lifted through worship.
As I wrote in the previous installment, you don’t become an Abraham – a great name; father of many nations and religions – just by showing up in church, dropping a bunch of coins in the offering basket, screaming at the top of your voice, clapping your hands, and sweating home. Then when you get home you say, “I went to worship God.” No way! You do it by sacrifices towards God that flow from love.
When people of old said they were going to worship God, they meant that they were going to do something tough; something painful; something costly: something expensive. That was what they meant. They meant that they were going to demonstrate their love for God in a very tangible way. They meant that they were going to do something somewhere that was going to send an unmistakeable signal to God that “We love you; You matter to us.” That was what they meant when they said they were going to worship. And that should be what you mean when you say you are going to worship.
Just as I stated in the beginning, I’m not just writing this so that you can understand what worship really is; I equally pray that it alters your practice of worship – how you worship your God.