Worship? pt-4

Worship in truth pt.2

Do we really worship?  It has been a question I have asked myself many times.  Especially when I read Jesus’ comments in Matthew 15:8-9 NLV “These people show respect to Me with their mouth, but their heart is far from Me.   Their worship of Me is worth nothing.”  When I worship I never want God to say that it has been worthless.  And yet I feel that much of what we do in churches today is worthless in God’s eyes.  We call it worship but our lives are lived for ourselves.

I once heard someone define praise as the fast songs we sing, and worship was the slow songs.  But I knew it had to be more than that.  Worship cannot just be a song we sing.  And God is actively looking for people who will worship Him.  “But the time is coming–indeed it’s here now–when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way.  For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.”  John 4:23-24 NLT

Last post I shared that worshiping in truth meant that we need to see God for who He really is and not for who we want Him to be.  We have been trying to force God into our understanding for a very long time.  One of the reasons Jesus wasn’t accepted by many of the Jews and the Pharisees and religious leaders was that He didn’t come as they expected or wanted Him to.  Even as Jesus was about to be taken into heaven after being raised from the dead the disciples were still trying.  They said “So when the apostles were with Jesus, they kept asking him, “Lord, has the time come for you to free Israel and restore our kingdom?”  They we still trying to fit God into their expectations after all they had seen and experienced living and walking with Jesus and seeing Him raised.

We need to let God be God, and worship Him as He is not for who we think He should be.  But worshiping in truth also means that our words and our lives should be in agreement.  We cannot sing “let your glory fall in this room, and let it go forth from here to the nations” if we are unwilling to get a passport and be ready to travel.  Worshiping in truth means that the words we say and sing relate to the life we live every day.

To many people stand in churches and sing words that they never think about.  It is just what Christians do.  We live in a time where Christians are not Christians.  We are “Christian Atheists” to borrow from Craig Groeschel.  We talk like God exists, and live like He doesn’t.  It is important that we change this.  For our worship to be true it must come from our hearts, and not be just words we  say.  It must come from a live that is spent living out daily the words we sing and say.  This is the kind of worship God is actively seeking.  He isn’t looking for perfection, just integrity. 

The profession of our lips needs to be demonstrated in the way we talk and live.  And our lives need to show a dependence on and a submission to the God we say we serve.  Otherwise our worship is without value.