Worship is the very heart of God’s purpose for creating us. And make no mistake about it, we all worship, all the time. Worship is linked to what we value, honor, devote ourselves to. We are always living for something, worshiping something. If we choose not to give God what He desires, and worship Him, we will worship anyway, simply exchanging the creator for something He has created. We may worship an object, a person, or a goal, but we will worship something.
Psalm 95 has a lot to say about who we should worship and how we should worship. When we carefully study this Psalm phrase by phrase, we get a pretty comprehensive guideline for what God-centered worship looks like. In this Psalm we discover the true heart of worship. Read it slowly and thoughtfully.
O come, let us sing for joy to the LORD, Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. 2 Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving, Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms. 3For the LORD is a great God And a great King above all gods, 4In whose hand are the depths of the earth, The peaks of the mountains are His also. 5The sea is His, for it was He who made it, And His hands formed the dry land.
6Come, let us worship and bow down, Let us kneel before the LORD our Maker. 7For He is our God, And we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Today, if you would hear His voice, 8Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, As in the day of Massah in the wilderness, 9"When your fathers tested Me, They tried Me, though they had seen My work. 10"For forty years I loathed that generation, And said they are a people who err in their heart, And they do not know My ways. 11"Therefore I swore in My anger, Truly they shall not enter into My rest."
Certainly this Psalm isn’t an exhaustive guide for worship, but it does give a solid foundation and starting point for discovering the heart of genuine, God-centered worship. In this beautiful Psalm I see seventeen characteristics of the heart of worship that we will look at more closely.
The heart of worship is:
Vertical . . . Joyful . . . Excited . . . Satisfied
Purposeful . . . Thankful . . . Engaging . . . Musical
Focused . . . Awestruck . . . Humble . . . Expressive
Reverent . . . Submissive . . . Teachable . . . Active Faith.
The Heart
Soli Deo Gloria
Next: The Heart of Worship is Vertical
Vertical are you going to be jumping for God....
ReplyDeleteWhile that is not the what I mean by "Vertical" I will definately address physical expressions of worship in future posts.
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