Worship

WORSHIP...
You say the word worship and it conjures up many different thoughts, feelings and pictures in the mind. Music playing, people praying, hands lifted high, looks of heavenly ecstasy on their faces, some singing, some swaying, some praying loudly while others stand or sit with tears rolling down their cheeks.

Others might picture one in solitude, silently contemplating the wonders all around them, or kneeling alone, head bowed, mouthing words of thanksgiving.

What if I said worship was standing on the sidewalk, handing sandwiches and coffee to the destitute, homeless or just down and out? What if worship were described as boldly, kindly going into the street and sharing a message of love and freedom with prostitutes, drug dealers and hardened criminals? Worship, when you’re alone and no one else is looking or even cares what you’re doing, and you do the right thing anyway? Worship, when someone spits in your face and calls you names and abuses you even though you’re doing your best to help them, and you offer love and grace? Worship, when you’re facing a temptation and you really want to do what you want to do, and you humbly choose instead to obey commands from a book, authored by One you’ve never seen, in purest of HOPE that it’s truth you can trust and rely on.

Worship is the value, the worth you place on something. Or someone. God, your Creator, Jesus His Son, your King and Lord. What value, what esteem do you hold them in, in your own heart, in your personal and intimate deepest place? That value will determine how you behave, how you speak, what you do, how you spend your time and how you treat other people. The greater value you place on God, the greater your response to Him will be. Not just on Sunday, not just in church, not just when the music’s playing, not just when someone else is watching, not just when you think it counts, but all the time, in every situation, toward everyone you come in contact with. As your relationship with Him grows, you will grow in your attitudes and behaviors.

Before you know it, you’ll no longer think of worship as being a separate “thing” you do or a set aside for a certain place or time. It’ll be the life your living, the joy you’re experiencing and the motivating factor of every facet of life for you. So those times when you’re singing and praying and reading the Bible and lifting your hands and exuberantly offering praise to the Lord your God will be only ONE of the times and ways in which you worship the Almighty.