THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. - Mark 12:30 (NIV)
This means no half-hearted commitment, partial obedience, and the left-overs of your time and money.
Where you worship is not as important as why you worship and how much of yourself you offer to God when you worship.
THERE IS A RIGHT AND WRONG WAY TO WORSHIP...
WORSHIP must be accurate~
We cannot just create our own comfortable or, in our minds, politically correct image of God. That is idolatry.
Worship the Father in spirit and truth.
WORSHIP must be authentic~
When Jesus said we must worship in spirit, He wasn't referring to the Holy Spirit (our inner enabler), He was pointing to our own spirit.
Genuine and heartfelt worship is your spirit responding to God's Spirit, and it involves delighting God.
This kind of worship engages your genuine emotions, not faked and baked in showmanship, pretense or phoniness. God hates hypocrisy. He wants your honest real love.
We can worship God imperfectly, but we must not worship Him insincerely. Naturally sincerity is not enough, and that's why both spirit and truth are required for worship to be accurate and authentic.
The best style of worship is the one that most genuinely displays our personal inner truth/feelings of our love for God. (this will be based on the background and personality God gave you and the current extent/degree of your journey towards His Way).
Worship shouldn't be an unsatisfying routine; don't force your worship; don't use devotional methods or styles that don't fit the way God uniquely shaped you.
We are all different, so how can you expect to love God the same way as everyone else?
Bottomline: There is no 'one-size-fits-all' approach to worship and friendship with God - just be your genuine self.
WORSHIP must be thoughtful~
Not vain repetitions. It is so much easier to offer clichés instead of making the effort to honour God with fresh words and ways. Reading the Scripture will expand your expressions and ideas for worship. (Real worship is rooted in the Word)
Also be SPECIFIC. You would rather receive two, or so, specific compliments than twenty vague generalities or a litany repetitious acclaimations. So would God...
Corporate Worship (church services,cell meetings, bible study groups, etc) should also be thoughtful. It is a biblical command that our worship services must be understandable to unbelievers when they are present in our worship gatherings.
WORSHIP must be practical~
Without your body you can't do anything on this planet. That is why God wants us to offer our bodies as a 'living sacrifice'. When God says, "Give me what you got", He's just being practical about worship.
Saying, 'I'll be there in spirit', means nothing, it's worthless. On earth your spirit can only be where your body is. If your body isn't there, neither are you - you are no longer of this world...
(How very true. Right there I learned something new and enlightening and find it a total eye-opener I am fully inclined to agree with)
WORSHIP means offering our bodies as 'living sacrifices'. The problem with a living sacrifice is that it can become discouraged, distracted and tempted; and it will 'crawl off the alter', and as mere humans we often do that.
Real worship costs. And the thing it should cost first is our self-centredness; we must deliberately shift the focus off ourselves.
When you praise God even when you don't feel like it, when you get out of bed to worship when you're tired (or partied-out or hungover), or when you help others when you're worn out - you are offering a sacrifice of worship to God!
The heart of the matter is a matter of the heart.
GOD BLESS US ALL - I love you ~ SB
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