"I still have morning
voice…"
"I got into a fight with my spouse on the way to church…"
"I have bad
breath and don’t want to frighten the people next to me…"
"I just CAN’T hold a
tune to save my life!"
All of these, and more, are excuses I’ve heard (…and even
used at times) on why people don’t lift their voices in worship on a Sunday
morning.
Church is a place
where we come to celebrate what the Lord has done for us, what he is doing in
our lives in the midst of even the most difficult circumstances at times. It’s
a place where we thank him for sending his Son to save us, a people who are so
undeserving. Church is where we commune with other believers, and lean on one
another. We come to church to grow in him and learn how to love him more and
more each day, but Sunday morning shouldn’t be the only day that we worship the
Lord.
I know you don’t wake up at home with a live worship band and
300+ people in your living room excited to see you and sing out. But the Lord
is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8.) We need to worship him
with the same passion and fervency in our individual quiet time daily as well
as our Sunday mornings. All over scriptures we hear about eternity in heaven and
how it’s going to be spent worshipping him day after day, forever and ever and
we won’t be restless about that! Why not get a start on that while we are still
here on earth right?
I’m currently reading
a book called
Worship On Earth As It Is In Heaven, it’s a book written by a Pastor at Harvest Bible Chapel,
Rolling
Meadows, Rory Noland. I would highly recommend it for your library. It’s very
practical insight on how to worship our great God. The book starts off studying
one of scriptures most well known worshippers, David. David wrote most of the
Psalms, worship songs he wrote to the Lord that have so many times been
reworked into worship tunes we hear even today.
The book discusses why
we need to make worship a priority in our lives. It needs to be a priority
because it’s why we were created! Isaiah 43:21 says we are “the people whom I
formed for myself that they might declare my praise”. So many of us would use the excuses that I had listed above,
but we need to know the Lord doesn’t care what we sound like, it’s where our
hearts are at. They need to be at a place where we are truly giving him the
glory he deserves. We are called to be worshippers and that needs to compel us
to be worshippers of our great God!
Know that worship
isn’t just the singing we experience before the message every Sunday morning.
It’s not just music period! It’s our response to our wife when she asks us to
do something we aren’t too keen on. It’s the way we handle that difficult
co-worker at the office, or how we react when someone cuts us off on the 400.
We need to be bringing glory to God in EVERYTHING that we do. So make worship a
priority in your everyday life, and also on Sunday mornings! Come to church on
time and have your heart prepared to give glory to the Lord for he is worthy of
our praise!
Blessings,
Jordan