Purpose Driven Life: Day 13

POINT TO PONDER

God wants all of me.


VERSE TO REMEMBER

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul
and with all your mind and with all your strength."
---Mark 12:30


RICK WARREN'S THOUGHTS

God doesn't want part of your life. He asks for all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.

God is pleased when our worship is authentic.

god is pleased when our worship is thoughtful.

God-pleasing worship is deeply emotional and deeply doctrinal. We use both our hearts and our heads.

The best style of worship is the one that most authentically represents your love for God.

Jesus' command to "love God with all your mind" is repeated four times in the New Testamant. God is not pleased with thoughtless singing of hymns, perfunctory praying of cliches, or careless exclamations of "Praise the Lord," because we can't think of anything else to say at that moment. If worship is mindless, it is meaningless. You must engage your mind.

"Offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your spiritual act of worship." [Rom. 12:1]

One thing worship costs us is our self-centeredness. You cannot exalt God and yourself at the same time. You don't worhsip to be seen by others or to please yourself. You deliberately shift the focus off yourself.


D-MONK'S THOUGHTS

Worship comes as a struggle for me. Weekly church gatherings seem tedious most of the time. I do not find myself engaged by typical acts of worship.

But I find three things in this reflection on worship that strike me as important and appropriate:

(i) worship should engage the mind,
(ii) worship should reflect my ways of loving God; and
(iii) worship is not about me.

The last point is a theme from the Purpose Driven Life as a whole. It's not about me. It's about the Creator, the one he gave me the gift of life and the gift of redemption. So worship need not necessarily "feel good" for me. I worship to give something tto my God.

Nevertheless, God may be pleased by forms of worship other than what I find in church services. The gifts and interests God has given me can all be used to please and praise him. It is what the character in the movie Chariots of Fire said, "I think God takes pleasure in my running."

So whatever I do, I shall try to do it for God's pleasure. This shall be my worship, to offer all of my daily acts to God as a gift to him.