Worship..how?
Some of the Apostle Paul’s last words to a young Christian Pastor included this statement, exercise yourself toward godliness. Our most important spiritual exercise and perhaps most difficult to learn, is worship. Jesus said, Without Me you can do nothing..John 15:5. What is worship? One of the great definitions I have found on the matter was written by William Temple..” For worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose – and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless motion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin.”
Christians who have no time for worship, or whose worship lacks discipline, have their priorities confused. After all, if God is the greatest and most important Being in the universe, then worshiping Him has to be the greatest and most important activity of man, woman and child, who are made in the image of God and saved by the grace of God.
In the OT the priests brought the ‘dead’ bodies of animals and their shed blood before the Lord; but as New Testament believers and priests of God (1 Peter2:5,9), we bring Him LIVING sacrifices, starting with our bodies. When you give your body to the Lord, you give Him all the elements mentioned in the Temple’s definition of worship because the word BODY includes the whole person – our conscience, our mind, our thoughts, our heart, our will and all the faculties, talents, and gifts inhabiting that holy temple – you! Each morning the OT priests would place a whole burnt offering on the later before God.
So do you as you present yourself completely to the Lord, to live and serve Him for that new day you start! The big difference also between the animal in the OT and you in the New Testament besides one being animal and the other human is this..the animal in the Jewish alter didn’t die voluntarily, but ours must be a voluntary act of worship that comes from the heart – that’s where worship begins!