If spiritual worship is a hard concept to grasp, how are we going to be able to put it into practice? This devotional reading looks at how we are to be living sacrifices to do just that.
Nuggets
- We put spiritual worship into practice when we live our lives totally committed to God.
- Putting spiritual worship into practice entails the right motives.
I wonder if sometimes we consider worshiping in spirit and truth an unsolvable mystery. If we can’t understand it, how are we going to do it?
Hopefully, in the last six devotions, we have figured out what spiritual worship is. The goal of this devotion is to start figuring out how we put it into practice.
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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Living Right
“And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice — the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him” (Rom. 12: 1 NLT)
We put spiritual worship into practice when we live our lives totally committed to God.
We talked about the sacrifices required under the ceremonial law in the Ceremonial Law series. After Jesus being the Sacrifice, we are called to make a living sacrifice. A living sacrifice is the embodiment of becoming sanctified and giving everything to God after being forgiven of our sins.
If the sacrifice is living, it is a 24/7/365/eternity practice. It isn’t something we take on and off. It is continuous.
We have to be ready to serve God when He calls. We have to remain sober minded and spiritually clean to pick up the tasks God has for us.
Glossary
Charnock equated living sacrifice with spirituality. He wrote, “The gospel service is spiritual. Spirituality is the genius of the gospel.”
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That puts a little different slant on things. When we think of living sacrifice, we think of what we do. When we think of spirituality, we think of who we are.
Worldview people can throw it up in our faces when they think who we are is too spiritual or godly. To them, it is a bad thing.
To us, it is a good thing. That is the way God thinks of us.
Barnes told us how ministers of the gospel should act. Remember, we are
He wrote, “Ministers of the gospel should be gentle, tender, and affectionate. They should be kind in feeling, and courteous in manner — like a father or mother.”
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This is a good description of how others should see us being living sacrifices. It is also a good description of who we should be, not just what we do.
Isn’t that really what spiritual worship is really about? It is how we put into practice the doctrines we are learning through sanctification. Sanctification is the transformational process of the mind, body, and soul, which begins with regeneration; gradually changes our nature and morals through the promptings of the Holy Spirit; and ends with perfected state of spiritual wholeness or completeness.
- Regeneration is being changed from spiritually dead to spiritually alive and the internal new birth and requickening that God brings about through the work of the Holy Spirit to give us new character.
- Spiritual death is the separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
- The spiritually alive are those who have ABCDed, so they are no longer separated from God.
- Spiritual death is the separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Spiritual graces are worldly morals that have been submitted to God to further His kingdom instead of enhancing this world.
- Sanctified means to be set free from sin.
- Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
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
Glossary
We might call it the two D’s: doctrine and duty. In today’s vernacular, it is more well received if we call the duty service.
It is what James calls faith and works. “So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (Jas. 2: 17 ESV).
The New Living Translation translates works as good deeds. Good deeds aren’t good unless they have the element of worshiping Sovereign God included.
Worship isn’t just singing. It isn’t just reading God’s Word and praying.
It is putting what we have learned through the Holy Spirit into practice to show the changes He has made in our lives.
In other words, we can’t come on Sunday morning, expect the Pastor Steve-types to give us the warm fuzzies, and go on our merry way to go back to doing what we were doing.
Our worship of God has to be the outpouring of our changed selves.
We are called to live consecrated lives. That means we devote our lives to serving God the way He calls us.
Arnot made a great observation. He wrote, “It is not the arbitrary though loving command addressed by a father to his infant son, that he may be trained to habits of unquestioning obedience; it is rather the work prescribed by the father to an adult son, which the son understands, and in which he intelligently acquiesces.”
Resource
God’s commands aren’t random. But neither is He a dictator.
God wants us to understand our calling and readily, cheerfully, and completely obey.
But let’s focus more on the worship aspect. We are all required to worship, just as we are all called to be priests. “But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession …” (I Pet. 2: 10 NLT).
No one gets a pass worship free card. This isn’t Monopoly.
Tyson said just the opposite. He wrote, “Every believer is assumed to be anointed, to have passed through the preliminary purification, to have been called and separated (1 Peter 2:9), and to have passed through the consecration ritual (Revelation 1:5, 6). Therefore every one of them has ‘boldness to enter into the holiest (Hebrews 10:19; Ephesians 3:12). And therefore they are all here summoned to holy service.”
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I think it is the preliminary purification that trips us up. We think the preliminary either didn’t take or wasn’t enough.
But it did and it was.
Jesus saved us from our sins. We became children of God.
That was enough.
Glossary
It Was Enough
Vocalist: Elaine Guthals
Keyboard: Chris Vieth
Because we are priests, it is our job to tell others. “… As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light. ‘Once you had no identity as a people; now you are God’s people. Once you received no mercy; now you have received God’s mercy” (I Pet. 2: 10 NLT).
The main difference between the ceremonial law and spiritual worship is what we are presenting. Law required a dead animal.
Spiritual worship requires a continuous offering of a living us. Oh, yes. We are to give of our time, talents, and money.
Those mean nothing if we do not offer ourselves.
Yes, we are to offer our hearts. Miller said that is the altar.
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We also have to offer our bodies. This is another way of saying that we must offer real, continuous, active, voluntary service.
Crowther reminded us that this sacrifice was not a gift to God. He has the right as our Creator to expect our worship. We do not have the entitlement to withhold it.
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God calls us to be totally committed to Him. He expects our lives to show that commitment.
Right Motives
“For the law was given through Moses, but God’s unfailing love and faithfulness came through Jesus Christ” (Jn. 1: 17 NLT)
Putting spiritual worship into practice entails the right motives.
I saw this verse and said, “Huh? How is this about putting spiritual worship into practice?”
Since we just got finished contrasting spiritual worship and ceremonial law, I can see the reference to Moses. Many would say he presented Judaism.
Then I reread what Charnock said. He wrote, “Spirituality is the genius of the gospel (Romans 12:1). Its matter — love of, and faith in, God — its motives (John 1:17), its manner, its assistances, are all spiritual.”
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Ooo, baby. That makes perfect sense. We have to have the right motivation when we worship God.
We can’t be doing it for personal reasons. We can’t be doing it just to escape hell.
We have to worship God because we love the Sovereign God.
The thing we don’t want to do is give God lip service. We don’t want to play at worshiping Him.
We have to totally believe that we are sinful creatures. Without a shadow of a doubt, we have to know that Jesus provided the only way for remission of those sins (Jn. 14: 6). We have to totally submit our lives and our beings to God.
True faith is the only motive God is going to accept.
Making the Connections #1
Fiddes reminded us that the only acceptable sacrifice to God is a holy one. “For the Scriptures say, ‘You must be holy because I am holy’” (I Pet. 1: 16 NLT).
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If our living sacrifice and spiritual worship are all intertwined, then it doubly shows that God must be the center of both. Acts of kindness not done in God’s name won’t count.
God has to be the center.
Making the Connections #2
Maclaren got it right. He said we can’t hold anything back when we offer a sacrifice to God.
God calls us to reasonable service. Maclaren told us what that is. He wrote, “It is a service or worship rendered by the inner man, transacted by the mind or reason, and thus, as indicating the part of our nature which performs it, is reasonable.”
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But what that really means is spiritual service. God wants our devotion — singular.
How Do We Apply This?
- Be a living sacrifice.
- Continue our spiritual worship all week long by putting it practice the doctrine God has revealed to us.
- Live a consecrated life.
- Keep our motivations right.
Resource
Father God. We want to worship You in spirit and in truth. We want to be living sacrifices for You. Help us to totally focus on You. Amen.
What do you think?
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