Last week in Part One of this devotion, I talked about the importance of humility and the role that it plays in our worship. Without it, we cannot come into God’s presence in the proper spirit of true worship. So, to even begin worshipping God, we must make ourselves humble to take part in fellowshipping with Him. I cannot honestly say that I have experienced real worship in every devotion or church service that I have ever attended and the reason for this is four-fold. For the most part it has been because I have not always understood how to allow myself the freedom to experience real worship or taken the time to prepare myself for it. Other times, I did not feel as if I was being lead or ushered into God’s presence by the worship service. Also, some of those times were because I chose to ignore being drawn into Worship out of my own fear of what someone around me would think. Our worship can be stifled because of various reasons, but we are always to make every effort we can to experience God in a manner of Holy and true worship. While there are many forms of worship, we are to always use humility, faith and obedience in every effort that we make, regardless to the act of our worship. For instance in Luke 7:37, when a woman in town came to Jesus with her alabaster of expensive perfume, she spared no expense to give Jesus the best that she had, for what she believed He could do for her; as well as what He meant to her. You see her worship was in humility, faith and obedience. She understood the gravity of His sacrifice for her sins. Jesus even said of her, that the reason that she was even doing such a thing was because of her great love for Him. She had understood her sins as God understood them. She understood the cost of the cross, and by her understanding, she was moved to brokenness, humility, faith and obedience to do whatever it would take, to show her affection and gratitude for the greatest gift she had ever received. Knowing the possibility and response of her actions, she took the chance and was ridiculed for what she was doing. Why? Because, some of them did not yet understand what it meant to receive forgiveness, like she understood it. Jesus would have to take each one of them down their own road of learning for them to understand. Jesus came to her defense by saying, that what she had done, was greater than what He had received from the host, Simon, the Pharisee, that had invited Him into his home. Upon hearing Simon’s thoughts about the woman, Jesus rebuked him for his heart attitude about her worship and her offering. Yet, even though she more than likely felt and heard the waves of judgment and misunderstanding of her, she stayed focused on her task at hand and that task was to pour on Jesus in obedience all that she had in order to worship Him, through her humility and faith in Whom she believed Jesus really was; the Son of God, the Savior, the One who could forgive and set her free! She worshiped God in Spirit and in Truth. There are times that many of us are sitting somewhere in a worship service and the Holy Spirit prompts our heart to do a thing….yet we refuse and say no, because we may fear what others may think of us or we might not understand why God would lead us to do something in such a particular way; that may be outside our box of reason. While God is a God of order, many times I fear that true worship is never reached because we back down in our faith and refuse to obey the Spirit’s leading. When those times come, we must say to ourselves, am I willing to take what little I have to offer God in this moment, in my worship of Him. If Christ does not mean much to us, then we will count it too great of a thing to do, in order to experience real and true worship. But if God is to us Who He says He is, then it will not be counted as loss to us, whatever He would ask of us. Some people are never comfortable with worship, no matter how many times they see others experience it. As a matter of fact in John 12, Mary poured a precious oil over the feet of Jesus and gave her worship to Him like the woman with the Alabaster box had done in Luke 7. Mary also was rebuked, because still some did not understand Who Jesus really was and His purpose for coming to redeem the lost, forgiving sins and restoring lives. Like Judas, some that walked among Jesus and saw firsthand the things that he did, still refuse to see. They followed Jesus to watch Him perform and many felt He was a nice guy with a good message. But the message was not for them. People that feel that way will never experience God in a personal way. Until a person can feel the forgiveness of their sins, they will never really know or understand the great cost of the Cross. Yet, once a person sees their sin as God sees their sin and chooses to turn in repentance, accepting the free gift of salvation that Jesus offers them, they then are allowed the privilege that no other is allowed apart from repentance, and that is to worship the One and Only True and Holy God. I Peter 2:9 says, But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” Finally, Obedience is what ushers the worshipper into the very presence of God. Being obedient allows us not to care what is going on around us or what others may think of us if we lift our hands, shut our eyes, maybe even cry… or simply say Bless the Lord, Amen, or Praise the Lord out loud. Obedience is what allows us to experience God in ways that we could not otherwise experience. Worship is a spiritual commodity, an act of our free wills. If there is no liberty in our worship, then friend there is no worship! Let us not be so quick to judge someone, because of their freedom to worship out of their love for the One who died for them! Whom the Lord sets free, they are free indeed!
Loving on you today!
Bren
