Worship

Our Heavenly Father wants us to worship Him because when we worship, we demonstrate to all of Heaven and Earth that we have understood what he has done for us.

"the true worshippers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks" (John 4:23).

Worship for the Father will consequently be an important feature of approaching the Throne of God because when we worship God for who he is and what he has done – through His Son Jesus Christ – we become engaged in what the Holy Spirit is doing.

So the disciple who worships the Father for the Gift of His Son through the Empowering Work of the Spirit begins to participate in the Trinitarian Life of God. "My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them" (John 14:23).

To worship God means expressing our appreciation of Him and what he has done. It involves thanksgiving, praise, adoration, music, lifting our hands, kneeling, prostrating ourselves (lying down) before Him. It involves singing in our own language and singing in tongues (the prayer language of the Spirit, 1 Corinthians 14:2,4,14, & 15). It will involve reciting the worship of Scripture because the Psalms have been given to us as model statements of worship each articulating different moods in different contexts.

And there are also many other worship hymns and expressions of worship throughout the Scriptures. Revelation, for example, has many, many different "spiritual songs" and descriptions of the worship of Heaven.

Worship requires energy and perseverance. It is a spiritual activity and therefore precisely because it is a spiritual activity we need to learn how to persevere in it; (as always the "measure you use is measured to you"). As we seek the Lord in worship, so we learn how to progress towards the Throne of the Lord.

We learn the different ways in which the Spirit moves and how to respond when he does different things. We learn what helps, and we learn what doesn’t help. Praying against someone does not help. Allowing my thoughts to be aggressive against someone does not draw me closer to the Lord – it has precisely the opposite effect. I then realize that everything in the Spirit has become silent and inactive, and I need to immediately say sorry, bless the person, and seek the Lord’s Face again.

So it is good practice to find ways and practices that help you draw near to the Father in worship.

For example:

1) You could make your own playlist and begin your prayer time listening to and engaging in worship. (Every Monday add to your collection one of the best worship songs you sang in the worship on Sunday.)

2) Or you could choose 31 of your favorite worship Psalms, (or worship Scriptures), and allocate each of them to one day each month so one of your favorite Psalms is allocated to use every time you pray.

3) If you play a musical instrument then play it and worship God as part of the time you spend with our Heavenly Father.