livingWORSHIP
Lately I’ve been realizing that I am just getting this idea of living a life in worship to the Father. Though I’ve been saved almost 10 years now, have experienced many supernatural moves of God in my life, been through Seminary, actively involved in mentoring, discipleship and being on mission for Jesus, been in ministry leadership as well as starting a prayer movement, what I am realizing is that I am really only just grasping the concept of living a life of worship to the Father. More and more, Holy Spirit has been reminding me of Jesus’ words, “But the time is coming – indeed it’s here now – when true worshippers will worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way”(John 4:23 NLT). The more I meditate on what it means to be a worshipper of Spirit and Truth, the more I am convinced that there’s a huge difference between doing worship and being a worshipper. I believe that everyone is capable of worship. If we realize it or not we are actively engaged in worship everyday. You don’t have to be a prophet to see how the world revolves around the worship of people and things. The worship of celebrities and political figures is nothing new, nor is the idolization of technology. Add to this equation the rising tides of addiction in the world and you have a recipe for even greater degrees of misdirected and distorted worship. It’s funny though worship is inherent to who we are because we have a Creator, why is it so difficult to live a life of worship to our Creator? The simple answer is sin. Sin has a way of perverting and distorting everything that we do. It’s not that sin makes us all as evil as we could ever be, but sin does have a way of twisting even our best intentions. Sin entangles us and keeps us from embracing being the true worshippers of Spirit and Truth that God desires.
Currently, I am in a unique season. The Lord is teaching me what is means to be His missionary. Over the last five years, I have been heavily involved in church ministry and leadership and have loved every moment. But, earlier this year the Lord impressed on me His desire for me to learn what it means for me to always be His missionary first and foremost. This transition has taken about a year and has meant stepping down from all church leadership, even relocating to another church. Embracing this new season, has inspired this current reflection on worship and service to the Lord. To be honest, this transition has been harder than I had expected. Always being God’s missionary has meant seeing life through a different lens. For the last five years I’ve looked at life through the lens of a shepherd caring for the flock that God has entrusted to my care. Now that this flock has been entrusted to others, I am feeling a bit lost. What I am realizing is that working in the barn is a bit different than working in the fields. When I was working in the barn (church), it was easier to discern the line between what was worship to the Lord and what was not. Learning to work in the fields (world) has meant redefining what worship to the Lord looks like. Working in the field has also meant having to be more intentional about making what I am doing as an act of worship to the Lord. Being in church ministry and leadership made it easier to see my service as a form of worship to God. It was easy to see what I was doing as “working for the Lord” (Colossians 3:23 NIV). Now that I am not actively involved in church leadership it’s like I now have to relearn what it means to be “working for the Lord.
I know I am still in the process of walking this out, but where I am leaning towards is rather than trying to make everything I do an act of worship to God I need to simply embrace more fully the reality that through Jesus I simply am a worshipper of the living God. If I try to make everything I do an act of worship to God, worship can very easily become reduced to a bunch of tasks to be checked off a list. I would end up doing worship all day, rather than being a worshipper where worship is inherent to who I am. On the surface, they may look simliar, but underneath is a world of difference. When worship is inherent to who I am, everything that I do becomes an act of worship because it is born out of love and devotion for the Father. Jesus fully understood this. His whole life was lived in worship to the Father because He understood who He was to the Father and who the Father was to Him. It must be no different with us. Our worship must come from a place of intimacy with the Father. The Pharisees lacked this intimacy with the Father and their lives where reduced to a bunch of external actions strung together with the guise of worship. But, their offerings of worship lacked the inward motivation that the Father desired. Everything they did had the external motivation of being seen and praised by men. They were continually projecting image, rather than pursuing intimacy. When worship comes from a place of intimacy with the Father, then a worshipper that the Father desires is born. And here’s the Good News: as believers in Christ we already have this intimacy with the Father, we just need to lean in and embrace this intimacy.
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