We must be sincere in worshiping God. This devotional reading looks at serving God with all our hearts.
Nuggets
- We are to be sincere, but sincerely alone isn’t what we are talking about.
- We should worship God in spirit and truth because of our love for Him.
Last year, our theme was getting our sanctification to the heart level. We know the heart is the seat of our thoughts, intellect, will, and affections that produces our character, from which all things spring, including controlling our spiritual position.
Getting our faith to the heart level means a couple of things. The first is that our faith has to impact all our thoughts, intellect, will, and affections. We can’t give God only part of us.
The second thing is that we have to be sincere. We can’t give God lip service. We have to mean it when we say we submit to God.
Charnock agreed that our spiritual worship has to be sincere. This must be the foundation of our living sacrifice.
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.
Resource
Worship Because of Intent
“God knows how often I pray for you. Day and night I bring you and your needs in prayer to God, whom I serve with all my heart by spreading the Good News about his Son” (Rom 1: 9 NLT)
We are to be sincere, but sincerely alone isn’t what we are talking about.
Pope called our attention to Paul himself. He was one way when he was Saul.
- “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God as all of you are this day” (Ac. 22: 3 ESV).
- “… If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless” (Phil. 3: 4-6 ESV).
Saul was sincere about serving God the way he thought was right. It wasn’t.
See what Pope said. He wrote, “The service he offered was sincere, but ignorant and bigoted, a service which rejected Christ and persecuted His saints.”
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That tells us how much Saul changed to be Paul. Paul worshiped God through his belief in Jesus. He did it right.
We can be sincere about feeding the hungry, caring for the sick — all the sheep and goat activities. They mean nothing if we aren’t sincere about worshiping God.
Glossary
This isn’t the first time we’ve talked about being sincere. (It probably won’t be the last time.)
We have to submit all our heart to God. We can’t hold some back for ourselves. We can’t give God lip service.
When we ask Jesus to be our Savior and Redeemer, we have to truly desire to become like Him. We have to genuinely repent and not commit our sins again. Repentance is acknowledging our separation from God and expressing sorrow for breaking God’s laws and commandments by making the commitment to change our sinful ways to ways of righteousness through obedience.
- Sin is not believing that Jesus is our Savior to save us from our actions by humans that disobey God and break one of His reasonable, holy, and righteous laws and commandments, goes against a purpose He has for us, or follows Satan’s promptings.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues and to serve and worship God.
- 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.
- Pure means not being sinful or having the stain of sin.
- Virtues are standards of moral excellence.
- 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.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues and to serve and worship God.
- Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
- Obedience means submitting ourselves to the will of God as it is presented to us and living our lives accordingly.
Glossary
Our intent in performing our actions must be to worship God in spirit and truth.
Worship Because of Love
“O my son, give me your heart. May your eyes take delight in following my ways” (Prov. 23: 26 NLT)
We should worship God in spirit and truth because of our love for Him.
Why is God asking for our hearts? Because He loves us.
Spurgeon told us how that works. He wrote, “Only love seeks after love.”
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Love is an attribute of God’s. “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (I Jn. 4: 16 ESV).
Love is the essence of God. It is Who He is.
We read this verse, and some may think it is a direct command. No, it is a request.
God asks for our love. It is our choice whether or not to give it to Him.
Spurgeon also told us why we have to give God our whole heart. He wrote, “You cannot give Christ a piece of a heart, for a heart that is halved is killed.”
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Jesus gave the why of that. “No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money” (Mt. 6: 24 NLT).
By giving God our hearts, we pledge to seek His Will rather than our own.
We do this to show God our love and gratitude. We also acknowledge that He is Sovereign God.
God has good reason to want our hearts. He wants to cleanse them with Jesus’ atoning blood. Then, He wants to fill us with wisdom and understanding through the work of the Holy Spirit.
The choice to give God our hearts is ours. He acknowledges our dignity.
It is understandable why God wants our hearts. If we give Him that, in essence, we are giving Him all of us — our will, strength, and love.
I know. This goes against our human nature. But it brings us back to our made-in-His-image nature.
Only God can do that — sanctify us. 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.
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
What has this to do with worship? Giving God our hearts is spiritual worship.
Making the Connections #1
Bird made a great observation that addresses sincerity. He wrote, “How much of God’s worship is performed outwardly when it is inwardly disliked.”
Resource
How many times have we heard it? Have we said it?
- I don’t like praying in public.
- I don’t like praying period.
- I can’t sing, so I don’t.
- I don’t like to read.
- I can’t understand what I read in the Bible, so I will read some devotion like Seeking God with Elaine’s to interpret it for me.
Suck it up. All of those are worship. We have to worship how God calls us to worship.
If we don’t, we aren’t sincere. We’re a Matthew 7: 21 disciple.
Making the Connections #2
Not long ago, we talked about the sacrifices required of the Jews. We said Jesus fulfilled the ceremonial law, making it so we do not have to sacrifice animals.
Instead, 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.
Smith had a great explanation of this. He wrote,
“Once God required offerings and sacrifices which men were unwilling to give, because it was a dear service of God; but now He saith that the heart is more than all burnt-offerings and sacrifices. Thy alms to the poor, thy counsel to the simple, thy inheritance to thy children, thy tribute to Caesar, but thy heart to God. Not a piece of thy heart, not a room in thy heart, but thy heart. Some have a double heart, but God acknowledgeth only one heart. God doth not require the heart as though He required no more but the heart. The heart carrieth the whole man with it.”
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Okay, let’s try that in Elaine-speak.
Smith felt that the Jews had trouble with the animal sacrifices because they were asked to give up something that cost them. The gift of their hearts was more important.
Doing the sheep and goats activities are great. They are not the most important.
We must give all of our hearts to God. We can’t be double minded (Jas. 1: 7-8).
To read a related devotion, click the button below.
How Do We Apply This?
- Sanctify our hearts so that our bodies will be temples unto God.
- Make it a habit to focus on our inward transformation while we hid with Jesus in God.
- Make prayer a habit.
- Sincerely accept God’s request for our love.
- Guard our hearts so we do not give our love to Satan.
- Decide to love God how so that our hearts are occupied and does not continue to be occupied by evil.
- Abandon all that God has forbidden.
- Believe in God’s promises.
- Seek God.
- Give God our hopes, fears, joy, desire, love, and delight.
- Hate evil.
- Delight in following God’s laws and commandments.
- Rejoice in obeying Him and accept His correction when we don’t.
- Work to understand the whys of His ways, not to understand hows of His wisdom.
Resources
Searching for and Seeking God
Hearing His Word (Rom. 10: 17)
Reading His Word (Rev. 1: 3)
Praying to Him (Heb. 4: 16)
Studying His Word (Ac. 17: 11)
Meditating on His Word (Ps. 1: 1-2)
Memorizing His Word (Ps. 119: 11)
Father God. We give our hearts to You. We sincerely love You. Help us to seek You. Amen.
What do you think?
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