In determining what spiritual worship is, we must look at its elements. This devotional reading looks at how praise, obedience, and faith show the sincerity of our relationship with God.
Nuggets
- Spiritual worship contains elements of praise and obedience.
- Spiritual worship contains elements of faith.
We’ve been identifying what spiritual worship is. The first point is we are to be sincere, but sincerely alone isn’t what we are talking about. We have to be sincere about serving God the way He says is right. We should worship God in spirit and truth because of our love for Him.
Major elements in spiritual worship must be praise, obedience, and faith. Let’s take a look.
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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Praise and obedience in Spiritual Worship
“Lord, accept my offering of praise, and teach me your regulations” (Ps. 119: 108 NLT)
Spiritual worship contains elements of praise and obedience.
What a great description of spiritual worship!
The Homilist said that this prayer sought God’s receiving and affirming of our offering of true worship. What I really liked was when it said, “The soul rings out aloud in speech and song its devotion.”
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An offering is a present. God gives us the gift of salvation. We give Him the gift of obedience.
Praise and obedience is what spiritual worship is in a nutshell. We acknowledge Who God is and live for Him.
The praise is good. But it has to be more than that.
It has to come out of our mouths initially. The proof is when it comes out of our actions.
The sincerity part comes when we offer the praise freely. That means two things to me.
- It has to come from our free will. Free will is the ability within us to make decisions, which determine actions that produce character. It has to be our choice.
- It has to be unrestrained, continuous praise.
Yes, our sincerity has to be shown in our acceptance of the laws and commandments. The laws tell us God’s character.
We can’t know God’s character until we know God’s laws. Nothing is more important than that.
I know. How can little ol’ us offer anything acceptable to Sovereign God. Cowper said it is His grace that He does accept our offerings.
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We think it is difficult to give our parents birthday and Christmas presents. Try the Creator of the World! Everything we have is what He has given us.
Cowper said size isn’t the determining factor on the acceptance of the offering. The sincerity of our hearts is.
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Think of the song lyrics. “If just a cup of water I place within your hand, then just a cup of water is all that I demand.”
God knows our limitations because He is the one Who gave us our skills and abilities. He expects what He has given us it be used for Him.
Faith in Spiritual Worship
“For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved” (Rom. 10: 10 NLT)
Spiritual worship contains elements of faith.
When I first saw this verse included on the list, I wondered about its inclusion. Then in the last section, we talked a lot about confessing as worship.
So, what else can we learn about worship here?
Lyth reminded us of the relationship between faith and confession.
Faith is an important element in spiritual worship. Faith is believing in God.
We won’t have a personal or corporate response of admiration (confession, thanksgiving, praise, etc.) for God if our attitude to God’s presence is not one of love and we don’t imitate His character.
We talked about knowing God’s laws in the last section. Knowledge is important, but God isn’t looking for intellectual faith.
Pilkington helped us with this. He wrote, “In belief of the heart, the mind as well as the affections is implied, for the heart, in scriptural language, is said to reason (Mark 2:6), to meditate (Luke 3:15), and to understand (Matthew 13:15).”
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I know, first read doesn’t read well. But let’s think about this.
Intellectual faith would be in the mind. We would rely on ourselves to make sense of things.
But when we get our knowledge down to the heart level, we take the knowledge from the mind and combine that with our mental state and run them through a biblical processor.
- “But some of the teachers of religious law who were sitting there thought to themselves,” (Mk. 2: 6 NLT).
- “As the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ,” (Lk. 3: 15 ESV).
- “For the hearts of these people are hardened, and their ears cannot hear, and they have closed their eyes — so their eyes cannot see, and their ears cannot hear, and their hearts cannot understand, and they cannot turn to me and let me heal them” (Mt. 13: 15 NLT).
How many of us have wondered if our faith is enough? Have we ever questioned if we were really saved?
Like, all of us at some point or another.
We don’t think faith the size of a mustard seed is good enough, even though Jesus said it was. We question whether God’s Word is true or not.
Our sincerity of faith is proportional with our belief in God. Spurgeon said we must truly believe to be sincere in our faith.
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That belief is necessary to realize obedience to God’s laws. Perfection/maturity is the end result for which we are shooting.
Making the Connections
Our being a living sacrifice is the best form of worship we can give God. We can’t be a sacrifice if we do not possess faith and have it present itself through praise and obedience.
Are we flawed? Yes. Do we still sin? Yes.
But when we have a genuine attitude of love and reverence for a Sovereign God Who loves us, God accepts that as a sincere offering.
How Do We Apply This?
- Turn away from our worldliness and sin to believe in God.
- Know that the testimony that God gives about His Son is true (I Jn. 5: 9-11).
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Father God. We are so flawed. Sin has taken Your creation and mangled it. Thank You for providing one way to triumph over that sin. We have placed our faith in Jesus as our Savior and Redeemer. Sanctify us so that we may be more like You. Amen.
What do you think?
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