United with Christ

...through Worship

The life of the Spirit within us desires to stir up a natural and continual worship, along with thanksgiving.
Through this act of gratitude and love toward the One who created and redeemed us, we express the desire to please Him and to obey Him.

According to Hebrews 13:15, “to praise God is a sacrifice which consists of offering to God the fruit of lips that confess His name,” that is, to exalt Him, to glorify Him with our lips. Praise is included in worship and is part of the sacrifices we can offer to God. But worship is not limited to praise; it is also found in generosity and in acts of kindness.

In Isaiah 58:6-7, the Lord says: “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?”

Worship is also found in obedience to God. It means offering ourselves to God by truly giving Him our lives—that is, by obeying everything He asks of us. It means removing from our lives everything that displeases God.

Worship and Thanksgiving
In these two virtues lie the key to Christian success and a blessed walk with the Lord.

To worship God is to offer Him our love, our obedience, our respect, our service, our praise, our thanksgiving. It is to recognize that He is the Almighty and that we owe Him everything. It is to give Him glory for all His works.

In John 4:23, Jesus reminds us that “the Father seeks true worshipers who will worship Him in spirit and in truth.”

Worship should represent the most important activity, if I may say, for us toward the One who gave us life and provided salvation! To worship is the attitude God requires of us when we consider His work and all He has done for us; in worship, we open the door to all the good things God wants to give us abundantly.

Galatians 5:22: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.”

For many Christians, to worship means to sing praises to God, but we can also do it simply by being grateful in our hearts for all that God has already done in our lives!
Then we discover His infinite love, His grace, His mercy, and His favor. We discover how much God loves us and provides for all our needs.

Worship must not be only in the background of our Christian life, surfacing during services or gatherings, but it must be brought to the forefront and be the driving force of our daily walk; it must inspire both praise and gratitude toward the One to whom we owe everything. It is the consummation of our marriage with Christ!

If we live in this way, we no longer need to be governed by the law or other principles or traditions—we naturally obey what the Lord asks of us. We have been delivered from our former carnal way of living, and now we walk in newness of life.

Romans 6:3: “We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

So let us be without restraint the worshipers the Father is seeking!

Franz