I think frequently how although we are free in Christ and not to be bound by legalism; we ought to care how we reflect Christ and represent Him to the world. We do have a cloud of witnesses watching and we really ought to care about that.
I was thinking and pondering the word worship. I looked up the definition and this is what I found on Christianity Today website. I just had to share it. I included most of the article below so I take no credit:
Psalm
96:9 "O worship the Lord in the beauty
of holiness: fear before him, all the earth" (KJV). The Book of Psalms is
filled with hundreds of poetic anthems used in the religious celebrations of
the children of Israel that clearly instructed them (and us) how to worship
God. Yet, even though I heard the word worship in conversation, testimonies, songs, and
Scripture, I didn't completely understand what it meant.
The Priority of Worship
Worship is
not the slow song that the choir sings. Worship is not the amount you place in
the offering basket. Worship is not volunteering in children's church. Yes,
these may be acts or expressions of worship, but they do not define what true
worship really is. There are numerous definitions of the word worship. Yet, one in particular
encapsulates the priority we should give to worship as a spiritual discipline: Worship is to honor with
extravagant love and extreme submission (Webster's
Dictionary,1828).
True
worship, in other words, is defined by the priority we place on who God is in our lives and where God is on our list of
priorities. True worship is a matter of the heart expressed through a lifestyle
of holiness. Thus, if your lifestyle does not express the beauty of holiness
through an extravagant or exaggerated love for God, and you do not live in
extreme or excessive submission to God, then I invite you to make worship a
non-negotiable priority in your life.
We worship
God because he is God. Period. Our extravagant love and extreme submission to
the Holy One flows out of the reality that God loved us first. It is highly appropriate to
thank God for all the things he has done for us. However, true worship is
shallow if it is solely an acknowledgement of God's wealth. Psalm 96:5-6 says, "For all the gods of
the nations are idols, but the LORD made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are
before him; strength and glory are in his sanctuary." In other words, our
worship must be toward the one who is worthy simply because of his identity as
the Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent One, and not just because God is
wealthy and able to meet our needs and answer our prayers. We must focus our
practice of worship on the worthiness of God and not his wealthiness.
The Person We Worship
Think about this: Would you continue to worship God if,
from this day forward, God's miraculous signs and wonders were not so
profoundly evident in your life? Would God still be worthy of your worship? Or
is your worship completely dependent upon the abundance of God's blessings upon
your life? Do you only worship God for what he can do for you?
The Promise of Worship
Because of
our God's unimaginable generosity toward us, God, in all of his glory, chooses
to respond to us through our worship. This is the promise—that when we worship
God with extravagant love and extreme submission, God will come and commune
with us. The promise is not that we will feel great or that our heavy load will
be lifted, but that God will come. And when God comes in his own time as a
response to our worship, Psalm 96:13 declares, "Let all creation
rejoice before the LORD, for he comes, he comes to judge the earth. He will
judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness."
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