A Life of Worship
When we worship, we are affirming that He is the King. Jesus gave up all to come to earth and then gave up that life to die for our sins.
Through that sacrifice, Jesus gave us an example of a life lived with our heavenly Father. Through His sacrifice in death, He gave us a way to that relationship with Him. We worship God through taking the opportunity He has given us to be in relationship with the Father. From the beginning of Genesis, we see how much God loves us through the intimate act of creation.
How to Make Worship a Lifestyle
First, He creates the world — plants, animals, land. That requires a physical closeness, showing the intimacy that our Father desires to have with His children. By praising God through all areas of our lives, He is truly Lord of all. We can be the dwelling space of the living God. It is such an overwhelming thought to remind ourselves of: God inhabits the praises of His people.
This space created is not just for a particular place or time, but for all areas of life. When we integrate worship into our lives, it transforms our perspective, choices, and relationships.
Worship as a Lifestyle
The foundational reason why we worship needs to be out of understanding His love for us. If it comes from somewhere else, say, power or fear, our response would not be to live a life worthy of the love we have received. It is a love that breeds confidence. As we develop a close relationship with God, we learn more and grow in our desire to live in holiness. The way we choose to live is based on what we value. When we worship as a lifestyle, we are giving God value above all else in our life. As we value God and our relationship with Him, we value holiness as it is our way to intimacy with God.
When we choose not to live in holiness, it means we are putting something else higher than God, and we cease to worship Him. Jesus said in John From this intimacy with our heavenly Father, we have all confidence to be able to give of ourselves in love for others. This is what makes it possible for us to love even the hardest of people.
Worship as the Center of the Christian Life
The Israelites, though individuals, were also called to represent God through their lives as a nation. Their individual and corporate identity were found in God, becoming a country defined by the One they worshipped.
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God has called us to unity, and worshipping together in agreement of His character is an effective way to reach unity. As we hear God speak to us in unity, we grow in our ability to see the needs around us, loving and caring for one another in a way that God would. This was the position of Ulrich Zwingli, the 16th century Swiss reformer, who taught that the bread and wine of communion were not significant in themselves.
We can recognize that, while symbols, actual bread and wine are real tangible objects that the Lord gave meaning to when he said that we were to remember his sacrifice whenever we eat and drink. When we use banners, flags, music, dance, incense or any other physical, sensible thing in worship, this does not mean that we are pagans. The true God is the God of creation and the physical universe, and if the mountains and the trees can clap their hands in praise of God Isa.
What God objected to was when humans would create images out of physical objects and worship the objects instead of Him. As long as we are using physical things as a tool, or a reminder of something God has or will do, we are okay. There is a danger, as evidenced by the Gnostics of the first and second centuries, of divorcing the true God from the physical universe and all it reveals about God and our relationship with Him.
We should therefore be comfortable with physical elements that support our worship, as long as we are not neglecting the spiritual in the process. In Jesus is the true and complete articulation of who and what God truly is. Though God is portrayed as an ethically ambivalent being in the Old Testament, distributing good and evil over all of Creation, Jesus declares that God is all good, all the time, and he demonstrates that goodness. Therefore we can assume that whatever he did was also the will of God, unless he was a liar, in which case we can ignore him altogether.
Therefore, Jesus made it possible to worship God as God truly is—all good and not responsible for evil, nor at this time actively visiting punishment and catastrophe on the disobedient. Is it not encouraging of worship to believe the truth that God is all good, rather than mean-spirited, and coercive? That He is light and in Him is no darkness at all?
That He who commands mankind to be upright and righteous is not a hypocrite?
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But Jesus invites his followers to compare his heavenly Father to an earthly father, and to ask if God cannot do good as an earthly father can Luke Conversely, would it not be equally fair to assert that God will not act in a way that if an earthly father behaved similarly he would land in jail?
This is a euphemistic way of saying that God engineered their death for His own glory. Can we imagine any circumstance in which an earthly father could get away with that? The same is true for all manner of things attributed to God as the controller of all circumstances from terminal diseases to late busses.
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It seems hard to imagine that such thinking could inspire a more worshipful attitude toward God, but it does seem to work for some. Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said: True worshipers have truth, not pretense, on the inside. Their heart draws close to God as the source of light, and they desire to be in the light, and not in the darkness.
Returning to John 4: God seeks those who sincerely draw near Him with humility and truth in their inward being, who do not pretend to honor Him while denying it by their actions. For such true worshipers, the form of their worship is quite secondary, and not a condition for the acceptance of their offerings. This is a sound foundation for a liturgical theology that respects both spirit and truth.
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