And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.
Deuteronomy 6:5 NLT
What does it mean to worship God. We often think that we go to church to worship Him. Worship is often seen as singing praise and worship songs before and after the sermon. There are praise and worship services that are given over almost entirely to singing. There is nothing wrong with that, but worship is so very much more.
This verse in Deuteronomy gives us a much bigger picture of what true worship is. It is living our lives each day for the glory of God. It is the picture of being the church rather than just going to church. All of our lives need to be an offering of worship to God.
Worship means acknowledging the true worth of something or someone. God wants us to know and acknowledge His true worth; His worthiness of praise and honour in every area of our lives. This is not some kind of narcissism that God has that demands worship. No! Our God is not narcissistic. What God wants is for us to see the greatness of His love and mercy towards us. He wants us to see His purpose and plans for our lives, which are so much greater than any of our own plans. God wants to share His nature with us by conforming us to the image of His Son. There is no selfish or self-centred agenda in God that makes Him demand worship, for worship cannot be demanded. It has to be freely given.
Our Heavenly Father wants us to see the true worth of being His, thinking His thoughts, walking in His way and enjoying His fellowship every minute of every day. When we do this, we are worshipping. This involves all of our being. We are to love Him with our heart and our mind. It is is not just emotional love, but intellectual love as well. We do not leave our brains behind us when we come to faith in Christ. God wants us to use our intellectual ability to worship Him. The vast majority (if not all) of the founders of the different fields of modern science believed that the Bible was the Word of God. (https://crev.ifo/scientists/index/). They could see that God was a God of order, not chaos, and that He had created the world to operate within the boundaries of certain laws. In setting their intellects to use in discovering these laws they were bringing glory and honour to Him. Their scientific work was a work of worship. We can worship God with our minds as well as we study God’s Word and share the evidences that these great scientists discovered. God created us to be rational. We do not worship with a blind faith; we worship a God who has made Himself known to us through the wonders of His creation.
God wants us to love Him with our soul. This implies moral decisions. God has set out a way of living which often goes against societal norms. We worship God through making right moral choices. That often means denying our ingrained natural inclinations. It means putting God’s word first in every decision we make in how we live our lives. It may feel “right” to us to do a certain thing, but if it goes against God’s Word, our “right” is wrong and we need to turn from it. This is not an easy thing to do. The sin nature that we are all born with makes us want to be independent of God’s moral law. We want to choose for ourselves our lifestyle. We may live a moral life out of independent choice, but that is not the same thing as choosing to live God’s way because we love and adore Him. There are very many good moral people in the world today, but that does not mean they are worshippers of God.
We are to love God with all our strength. That implies action. Loving God means loving other people, even those we don’t like! It means putting other people first. It means putting other people’s needs before our own. It means living like Jesus. Our society puts self-first. Our sin nature demands that we put self-first. Self-confidence, self-worth and self-achievement are the prized attributes of our society. Yet, God’s Word tells us to put others first. That doesn’t mean that we become a slave to the demands of everyone around us. Jesus was not a slave to the people He taught and ministered to. He had regular times of rest. But His purpose was to show the heart of the Servant King. The Sermon on the Mount describes the upside-down (or right-side up!) way our lives should be lived. Our self-confidence, self-worth and self-advancement needs to be replaced with a new confidence in God’s ways, with our worth being found in our relationship with Him, and our focus being on the advancement of His Kingdom.
Worship is not going to church. It is not singing hymns of praise and worship. It is not paying our tithes or giving our offerings and alms. It includes all those things and so very much more. Worship is living for God in every detail of our lives, every day of our lives. It is not just for Sunday or special services. Worship is a lifestyle.
