When was the last time you worshiped God with fellow believers?
This is Felicia Ferguson with Christian Mix 106, helping you build faith for the journey.
When was the last time you worshiped God with fellow believers? And I don’t mean standing to sing three songs in your weekly church service. I mean what Richard Foster means when he writes about worship as a spiritual discipline. When God’s Spirit touched your spirit. As he says, “Singing, praying, praising all may lead to worship, but worship is more than any of them.”
To experience true and full corporate worship as a spiritual discipline, we must first make sure that God is our priority. Our thoughts and heart aren’t divided, elevating other things or people above God. Then we must make sure that worship itself is valued more than our service. We are to first love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, and spirit. Then we are to love others and serve them as we would ourselves. When we enter into worship with our fellow believers, we should do so actually expecting to hear from God. That expectation comes from a life lived in the presence of God.
I don’t mean that you should quit your job, leave your family and other responsibilities, and join a monastery or convent. But you should be listening at all times to hear God’s voice and feel the presence of his Holy Spirit around and in you. Brother Lawrence was a monk who lived a life just like this. Even when he washed dishes, he made sure to be so in tune with the Holy Spirit that he never drifted away from feeling his presence.
True worship begins with holy expectancy and ends with holy obedience. If we leave the corporate worship experience without being changed, then we have sung songs, said words, even simply enjoyed being with our siblings in Christ, but we have not worshiped. True worship inspires a desire for greater obedience to the one who created heaven and earth. It helps us to release our petty or even grievous insults we’ve experienced.
So I challenge you, this week even before you get to church, embark on the great adventure of true worship. Listen for God in the mundane, in the little details, and expect him to speak to you in subtle nudges, unexplainable peace, or even words that seem to pop into your head from elsewhere. Then go to church expecting to hear more. And watch his Spirit meet yours in true worship.
This is Felicia Ferguson. Thanks for listening to Christian Mix 106.
