Worthy Worship
I am afraid that many of us have a concept of worship that leaves out one of the main things for which God is looking. When many people think of worship, they think of going to a church and gathering with a group of people to sing songs and to hear a message from the Bible. Yes, those are elements of worship, or at least, they can be. However, there is much more to worthy worship that those things. God is worthy of all of our praise, our thanks, and all that we have to give to Him to show Him how much He means to us. That means worship must involve giving ourselves and our possessions to the Lord as an act of submission and thanksgiving for how He provides for us and loves us. David knew this very well. (II Samuel 24:24) That is why when he needed to make sacrifices to the Lord to stop the plague, he insisted on buying the threshing floor of Araunah and the oxen he would sacrifice. He told everyone there that he would not offer burnt offerings to the Lord his God that did not cost him anything. Then, he paid twenty ounces of silver to buy the property and the oxen before he would offer worship to God. Let's take a minute to learn from this.
If we only worship God when it is convenient for us, we are saying that He is not very important to us. That is not worthy worship. We should sacrifice our comfort and use our energy to do whatever it takes to be regular in our worship of the Lord. This shows Him that we value Him, and our worship is about Him, not us. Also, when we worship the Lord, it has to come from the praises of our mouth, which are deeply rooted in our heart. We can't fake worship by singing things we don't really mean. God sees our hypocrisy. We must be willing to submit our whole self to the Lord, our time, talents, and our offerings to Him. If we are not willing to give Him something that costs us time, energy, and money, our worship is in vain. It has been said that we can tell what is important to a person by looking at their calendar and bank account. Yes, what we give our time and money to is our god. That is why we need to make sure we give our all to the Lord, and we are faithful in giving Him things that cost us, so we prove how worthy He is to us. That is worthy worship.
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Tomorrow, I intend to read I Kings 2-4.