Let us Bow Down and Worship the Lord!

Hello!  Today we are going to talk about my very favorite spiritual discipline and the passion of my life, which is WORSHIP. I absolutely love to worship God!  It is the deepest desire in my heart. I will never grow tired of worshipping God. I often wish I could do it all day long and am sincerely hoping this will be my job in heaven. I have had visions about putting on huge productions for God, to please Him, and for His glory and His honor. I have thought about the fanciest celebrations we have here on earth with fireworks spectaculars, and I am wanting to put on the largest production this world has ever known to honor our Creator. Who else is worthy, besides Him?

“God is trying to call us back to that for which He created us, to worship Him and to enjoy Him forever”—A. W. Tozer


WHY WE WORSHIP:

1. HE IS HOLY

God inhabits the praises of His people! We worship God because it is how we experience His glorious presence.

“It is in the process of being worshipped that God communicates His presence.” – C.S. Lewis

Psalm 22:3
“But You are holy,
Enthroned in the praises of Israel.”
Worshiping God can become addicting in a good way. It is a natural high to praise God and feel His mighty presence and His glory. I often feel the highest good I can do with my time is simply worship God. I also want to begin to experience more and more the continual glorious presence of God throughout the day and not just in worship time that is set aside.

We worship God because there is no one like Him. He is sacred and holy. He is altogether different than all of creation. He alone is eternal, wise and King forever.

1 Timothy 1:17
“Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, to God who alone is wise, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.”





2. HE IS WORTHY

Hebrews 13:8
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
Who else is so faithful to us day after day, month after month, year after year, decade after decade?  Who else has given their life to give us eternal life with them, forever? Who else has shed their blood so our sins could be wiped away, and that the Father would accept us with open arms?  Who else would do for us what Jesus has done? Who else is so committed to us that they will never leave or forsake us? Who else can do for us what Jesus has done? NO ONE.

Psalm 136:1
 “Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good!
    For His mercy endures forever.”


3. HE IS GOOD

God is every good thing to us. It is hard to comprehend all that His goodness entails. It just suffices to know He is every good thing we can possibly imagine, and a lot that we can’t yet imagine. Jesus is the reversal of the fall of man.

In Genesis 3:6 it says: “when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.”

Just as this put into effect the fall of man, we must now take and eat of the body of Christ, in a Spirit of worship, for He is good for food, pleasant to the eyes and desirable to make one eternally wise and eternally alive. We take and eat of Him.


John 6:35
And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.”

I believe when we worship God we partake of Him and His goodness, feeding on Him like branches of the vine.

Jesus said:
John 15:5
 “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.”


He is not only our sustenance, but in His great abundant blessings He has made Himself so sweet to the taste that we delight ourselves in Him.  We find that He alone can satisfy our every desire. When we go further and deeper with Him we see that surely He is better than any earthly pleasure.

Psalm 119:103
“How sweet are Your words to my taste,
Sweeter than honey to my mouth!”

Psalm 34:8

“Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good;
Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!”



HOW WE WORSHIP:


1. IN SPIRIT AND IN TRUTH

"The first element in worship is adoration. The Hebrews expressed this by their posture and not alone my their word. For they prostrated themselves before God. O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. They did not come with an easy familiarity into the presence of God, but were aware of his greatness and majesty, and came with a sense of privilege to His house."- H.H. Rowley ("Worship in Ancient Israel" p. 257)

We must worship the Father in Spirit and in truth. We must recognize who God is and then we must recognize who we are in comparison. He alone is the God of glory and majesty. He is HOLY. He is WORTHY, and He is GOOD. We are none of these things, except by Him and through Him, through the power of the Holy Spirit in us. We must worship Him in full knowledge of these things and let the sweetness of His truth invade our spirits and inspire songs of praise in our hearts. True worship can only come from our spirits. All else is just surface movement. True worship comes from deep within the heart, revealing the depths of our love for God, for all that He is and for all that He has done for us.

Jesus said:
John 4:23-24

“But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”


2. WITH OUR ALL

Matthew 22:37
Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’

We must seek to worship God with our ALL. We must worship with all of our body, mind, spirit and strength. We must give it our ALL. Just as we love God with all of our heart, soul and mind, we must worship Him with our ALL.


Luke 10:27 also says to love God with all our strength. When we worship God we must worship Him with all of our strength, like David dancing before the Ark of the Covenant with all his might.

2 Samuel 6:14
“Then David danced before the Lord with all his might; and David was wearing a linen ephod.”


3. ALWAYS

Psalm 34:1
“I will bless the Lord at all times;
His praise shall continually be in my mouth.”

We can always praise God because He is always worthy and is always good, no matter what we are going through. It’s as simple as that. There is never a moment where God is not good, or not worthy of all the praise, honor, glory and adoration that we have to give. He is always good.




4. MELODIOUSLY
Ephesians 5:19
“speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord,”

We can be creative in our worship to God and put our own creative signature on the way we worship. We can worship to the music that makes us feel closest to God and best expresses what is in our hearts. Worship can be colorful, beautiful, mysterious, melodious, and spontaneous. Above all, worship is a work of living art. We can sing and dance our love to our King. We can use our bodies to express what we feel for God in the very depths of our hearts and souls.

“Our entire being is fashioned as an instrument of praise. Just as a master violin maker designs an instrument to produce maximum aesthetic results, so God tailor-made our bodies, souls and spirits to work together in consonance to produce pleasing expressions of praise and worship. When we use body language to express praise, that which is internal becomes visible.” -Don McMinn (p.60 "A Heart For Worship" by Lamar Boschman)

5. SELFLESSLY

1 Thessalonians 5:18
“in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”


We can always give God the sacrifice of praise no matter what we are going through. I have been through times when I have not felt like praising God, but I ended up doing it anyway and I felt it to be a mighty spiritual victory over the enemy.

Worshiping God even when we don't feel like it is called the sacrifice of praise. Offering the sacrifice of praise to God is a triumphant victory. It combats the power of the enemy in ways that we can’t possibly understand. When we worship we are winning a spiritual victory in the heavenly places. Worship changes things in the atmosphere. I fully believe that true worship accomplishes things that cannot be accomplished in any other way.


Hebrews 13:15

“Therefore by Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name.”




6. FIRST

“We're here to be worshipers first and workers only second. We take a convert and immediately make a worker out of him. God never meant it to be so. God meant that a convert should learn to be a worshiper, and after that he can learn to be a worker...The work done by a worshiper will have eternity in it.”

A. W. Tozer

Lately, I have realized the first and most important work I have to do on this earth is simply to worship God. I know in my spirit when I worship God I am doing something of such great value and worth that I can hardly comprehend all that it is accomplishing in my body, mind and spirit. All I know is that when I worship God regularly I have such great peace and joy that I can readily recognize when I haven’t been worshiping enough. I know worship has an even greater effect on my mental and physical health than physical exercise or eating a healthy diet. Worshiping God can also involve physical exercise (such as dancing), but the effects of worship are far greater than mere physical exercise. We are working out our bodies, minds and spirits when we worship, and the effects of it are beneficial to us in every single way. We can become addicted in a healthy way to the wonderful joy it is to worship the Lord in spirit and truth. We ultimately worship God for His benefit, not our own, but in His great goodness He has made it so that when we worship Him we benefit greatly from it also and enjoy it greatly, as well as He does.



“Christians believe that true worship is the highest and noblest activity of which man, by the grace of God, is capable”—John R. W. Stott