Text: Nehemiah
7-8
"This
day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is
your strength."
Nehemiah
8:10b
The people had
intense joy when they heard the Word of God. How long - if ever -
since you and I experienced this kind of joy from hearing His Word? Do
we ever truly feel that joy? Or do we take for granted the Words He
has provided for us? Even though we may know many verses by heart, do
we ever really let them touch our hearts? Does our worship even show
that joy?
Psalm
95
Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.
Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song.
For the LORD is the great God, the great King above all gods.
In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him.
The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.
Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker;
for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.
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Can we say
these words from our own hearts?
God is great
and He deserves my praise - my highest praise. This praise has to come
from the deepest part of me. It has to be from an awe-filled silent
praise as well as our energetic singing to Him. Do we ever get to the
point we are "on our faces" before Him? Or do we praise Him
the same way we do other people? How could we possibly truly sense His
awesome presence, and not fall to our knees with our face to the
ground? Do we truly allow ourselves to acknowledge His greatness? Do
we truly believe He is the creator of all we know...of all we will
ever know? If we did, we could not be so haphazard and lax in our
worship of Him!
"Worship
is a human response to a divine revelation." God
says and does things, and we respond to it.
Does that
describe your worship times? Does it describe mine? Do we care what
anyone else thinks as we are worshipping our Father? Is everything
around us blocked out except Him? When He touches us, how could we be
aware of anything or anyone else?
Oh, that our
worship would magnify Him! Our worship should be enlarging our
horizons and changing our perspective beyond our self-imposed fences
of our own limitations. It should cause us to see life through His
eyes.
In worshiping
Him, our fears would be forgotten and our spirits refreshed. A bold
confidence would grow in our hearts as He surrounds and fills us. He
would satisfy our thirst and renew us!
Let us pray
that our worship will be from all that we are! Let us pray that our
work will be enhanced because we have truly worshipped Him! He has
given us the tremendous gift of music, a medium that has a special
dimension for us in worshipping Him. Our times of worship ought to
give us a new song in our hearts that will protect it and keep it from
drying up.
He seeks our
worship!
Yet
a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers
will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the
kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and
his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
(John 4:23-24 NIV)
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Our worship
needs to be always in keeping with His Word. It is to be in spirit
with the depth of out emotions and our love for Him. It is to involve
our hearts as well as our heads!
He has provided
many acts of worship in His Word from the beginning to the end!
In
the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil
as an offering to the LORD. But Abel brought fat portions from
some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favor
on Abel and his offering,
(Gen 4:3-4 NIV)
He
said to his servants, "Stay here with the donkey while I
and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will
come back to you." (Gen 22:5 NIV)
"Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will
depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the
name of the LORD be praised." (Job 1:21 NIV)
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From
these alone we can see how to worship Him - in obedience!
From
Abraham’s example, we learn that any sacrifice we make to Him is an
act of worship. How else could he have been able to to take his own
son to sacrifice if it were not that he was going to worship His God?
How could he withhold anything from Him who had given him all things?
Do we have that mindset when He asks us to give anything back to Him?
Do we even realize it is an act of worship, or do we robotically hand
over a tithe or whatever He has asked of us? Oh, how very different it
would be if we truly let go of all He asks us to as an act of worship!
There would be no room for worry or self-pity! There’s be no room
for second thoughts! We’d be on our faces handing it all over to Him
with a song in our hearts!
Even
in the midst of great suffering we can worship him. We have such a
tender example in Job. He lost everything through no fault or choice of
his own. He was miserable with grieve and sicker than any of us have
ever been, and yet, we find him praising God and worshipping Him! And
how many times do we let hurt feelings or worries or fatigue interfere
with our worship times, and feel justified in doing so? Shame on us!
Let
us commit to being active participants in worship to Him every day!
Let us feel free to sing out to Him in praise anywhere at anytime. Let
us seek out others to share in corporate worship!
And
in our daily lives, let us truly know what it means to offer our
bodies as living sacrifices to Him as an act of worship! (Rom 12:1)
May everything we do for Him and His kingdom be done as an act of
worship. Can you imagine how our attitudes towards many things would
have a radical change?
Oh,
Father, I pray that my personal worship will be ignited by Your fire
and that it will be deep and consistent. If there is anything stealing
my joy and sucking the life out of my worship, open my eyes to it, and
remove it from me! I want nothing to hinder my praise
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2000 PowerPraise