Spiritual worship allows us to focus on God. This devotional reading looks at how our desire to worship Him and our understanding to worship Him increase as we make these habits.
Nuggets
- Our spiritual worship must be offered because we want to worship God.
- Our spiritual worship must be offered because we understand what God wants us to understand.
We’re looking at the elements needed to build spiritual habits that lead to spiritual worship. We’ve looked at faith, love, knowledge of our own weaknesses, our desires, thanksgiving, and adoration.
Next, we are going to be looking at delight and reverence.
Let's Put It into Context
To read devotions in the Habitual Holiness of Heart and Life theme, click the button below.
Here is a running list of nuggets for the theme.
Devotions in the Finding Jesus through Spiritual Worship study
Here is a running list of nuggets for the study.
The foundation of this series is Menander and Charnock’s Spiritual Worship.
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The headings are Charnock’s words.
Offered with Delight
“There I will go to the altar of God, to God — the source of all my joy. I will praise you with my harp, O God, my God!” (Ps. 43: 4 NLT)
Our spiritual worship must be offered because we want to worship God.
Yes, worship is a duty, something that is expected of us. That does not make worship a chore.
We are to worship God joyfully.
This joy, however, is kind of a chicken and egg thing. Which comes first — our joy that we possess because we can worship Sovereign God, or the joy that comes from God because we do worship Him?
Allen noted there are two prongs to worship. We worship because we want the communion with God. Worship opens the lines for communion with Him.
We also must want to worship publicly. During COVID, there were a lot of people who were comfortable having church in their own homes. Even after we have gained some semblance of normal, there are some that do not see the benefit of corporate worship.
Worship is all about connecting with God. God can and does communicate with us individually wherever.
But individual worship must be in addition to corporate worship.
Allen said that it is God’s desire that we crave public worship. He wrote, “It is of the very essence of the religious heart that it should yearn for God.”
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We have to bring ourselves to Sovereign God for consecration. Consecration is the process of being set apart.
Worship can’t be lip service, pretending to be self-sacrifice. It has to be the real deal.
Only when worship is real do we find joy in the Lord.
Watson said something that is thought provoking. He wrote, “The devotional spirit is the life of religion; and there never was a man of piety who was not a man of prayer.”
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What is the devotional spirit? It is the spirit through which we worship continually. We must worship throughout our lifetimes.
If we don’t, we aren’t righteous. Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
One way we worship throughout our lifetimes is prayer. We just talked about Paul saying we have to pray without ceasing (I Thess. 5: 17).
When we pray, we go to the altar. That is where we are consecrated.
We recognize that we have sinned, we need punishment, and we need to ask Jesus to be our Savior and Redeemer, as only He can provide us with atonement. Atonement is about repayment for a wrong by the shedding of Jesus’ blood.
Then, we find joy in our confidence in God.
In other words, we have to be an active participant in worshiping God. Our lives have to live out the fact that we believe in Him.
We have to be a living sacrifice. A living sacrifice is the embodiment of becoming sanctified and giving everything to God after being forgiven of our sins.
Spiritual worship is living for Him.
Offered with Understanding
“And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God” (Eph. 3: 18-19 NLT)
Our spiritual worship must be offered because we understand what God wants us to understand.
I know. I can see you jumping up and down over there saying I believe that we cannot fully understand God. We can’t.
So now why am I saying we have to offer understanding?
I got this from Pulsford. He wrote, “From Divine love, as the root and ground of the soul’s life, comes all spiritual perception. I say spiritual, as distinct from intellectual, perception.”
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We aren’t looking for worldly knowledge or intelligence. We are looking for spiritual discernment. Discernment means we can evaluate the situation and recognize right from wrong.
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
God’s ways are above our ways (Isa. 55: 8-9), but we are learning to be like Him. He will give us the ability to look at situations and determine if they are holy or sinful.
God will reveal His love for us. We just have to pay attention and learn what He is trying to teach us.
But remember. This is still in Charnock’s Offered with Delight section.
We aren’t supposed to kick back because we don’t have God’s full understanding.
We are to worship God for what we do understand and commit to learn more from Him. We are to worship Him because He is more than we can ever hope to be.
Spurgeon said we have to learn to measure as God does. We have to learn to call a sin a sin — and not try to rewrite God’s Word.
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We want God’s discernment.
Spiritual worship helps strengthen and expand our spiritual faculties. As we praise God more and more, He blesses us with more strength and understanding.
God wants us to understand what we need to understand to trust Him. We have to understand so we resist temptation.
Making the Connections
“And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is” (Eph. 3: 18 NLT)
Hey now wait a second. I thought God’s love is unmeasurable. “For his unfailing love toward those who fear him is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth” (Ps. 103: 11 NLT).
But here, Paul is saying disciples should be able to figure it out. We have the power to understand.
Oh, that boy. Then Paul contradicts himself. “May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God” (Eph. 3: 19 NLT emphasis added).
How do we reconcile this?
In my opinion (and I may be right or wrong), God does have a set amount that we can understand. We have to realize how much — wide, long, high, and deep — His understandable love is so that we can put our belief in Him.
But God’s love is infinitely more than what we can understand.
How Do We Apply This?
- Submit to Sovereign God.
- Commune with God.
- Experience joy in God.
- Long to spend eternity with God.
- Grow our spiritual faculties.
- Meditate constantly on God.
- Measure to the ability we can understand how great God’s love is.
- Love God and experience His love.
- Be filled with God.
Resources
Father God. We want to worship You in spirit and in truth. We want to understand what You through Your Holy Spirit and Word are telling us. Help us to focus on You. Amen.
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
What do you think?
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