The Necessary Place for Worship / Worship and the Word series – Lesson 8
There’s not a place life can take us where it’s not appropriate, even necessary, to worship God.
For regardless of what that place looks like or feels like, the God we worship hasn’t changed. Whatever the place, God is saying to us, as in Psalm 46:10, “Cease striving! Stop! Be still! And know that I am God! The result will be a heart that longs to worship me” (my paraphrase).
Whether life is calm or hectic, joyful or painful, we need constant reminders of who God is in the midst of that place. Sometimes it feels like the “mountains have slipped into the heart of the sea” (Psalm 46:2), but God is still God. He’s still good, faithful, merciful, and loving. Sometimes everything seems to be going my way, and God is still God. He’s still my light, my hope, my forgiver, and my wisdom.
God is fully God – all that He says He is – at all times. No amount of turmoil, or confusion, or victory changes that truth. That’s reason enough to worship Him!
There are multitudes of Biblical examples of worshiping God in various places of life. I’ve placed them in three categories – places of difficulty, blessing, and revelation.
1) Places of difficulty – Did you know that 70% of the Psalms are laments, written from places of crying out to God? Yet they never challenge who God is or His worth. Instead, they reveal Him as the source of hope. They claim His goodness, greatness, and faithfulness.
David wrote Psalm 63 when he was in the wilderness of Judah – a place that’s difficult for a lot of reasons. God was protecting him, but He hadn’t changed the situation yet. David knows his need to seek God, and seeks Him “earnestly” (v.1). He does this by entering the “sanctuary” (v.2), or place of worship, “to see [His] power and [His] glory” (v.2). Why? Because he already knows by experience that God’s “lovingkindness is better than life” (v.3), and he knows his need to verbalize it once more. After all, his “life” was on the line (v.9)! So this was David’s expression of faith and the beginning of worship to the God that he knew intimately.
As David continues to lift up who God is, he finds “satisfaction” (v.5) for his soul. He then continues to “remember” (v.6) God’s faithfulness and strength in the past, leading to an increase in his faith and reliance on God for his current situation.
May the difficult places of life find in us hearts that comprehend the power of God’s presence and glory in worship and therefore choose to bow before Him once again – even in difficulty.
2) Places of blessing – Worshiping God in a place of blessing is so much easier. Right? Not necessarily! It’s very easy for us to become accustomed to feeling blessed, so much so that we forget where the blessings come from. We tend to take the simple things for granted, subconsciously believing we deserve them or are responsible ourselves for all the good things around us. And it’s easy to become self-absorbed, distracted, or just plain apathetic. That’s why it’s important that our first pursuit be that of knowing and loving God, out of which will grow a desire to worship Him as a way of life.
In Luke 17:12-19, we have a good example from one healed leper who chose to stop to glorify Jesus, and 9 others who chose not to. I can’t personally imagine a blessing any greater than that of being healed by something as horrible as leprosy. It’s even harder to imagine that out of ten men who saw Jesus face to face and knew that He Himself had healed them, only one stopped to give glory to his Healer. Yet, I’d hate to read a list of blessings, big or small, for which I’ve failed to thank and glorify God, especially since we see here that Jesus didn’t just recognize the one that returned, but grieved the nine that didn’t.
We need to choose to recognize and give glory to the God who so graciously and generously gives us the blessings in our lives. What pleasure we bring to our Heavenly Father when we say, “My soul will make its boast in the Lord!” (Psalm 34:2).
3) Places of revelation – God has committed Himself to revealing to us the truths about who He is and how He works. Jeremiah 29:13 says, “ . . . you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” The more intimately we know Him, the quicker we’ll recognize His truths, His hand, and His movements when they come our way.
In Daniel 3, we find the familiar story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. I love King Nebuchadnezzar’s response to the fiery furnace incident. While it’s true that it was hard to deny what had just happened, Nebuchadnezzar didn’t hesitate. He said, “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego” (v.28)! While this was quite the revealing moment, I think that if we really looked, we too, would see God’s hand in more places than we could imagine.
There are also God’s revelations of Himself around us in nature that should prompt our hearts to bow in worship. “And one called out to another and said, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory’” (Isaiah 6:3). The literal translation is “the fullness of the whole earth is His glory.” Do we take time to view God’s revelation of Himself around us for the amazing thing it is and respond to Him in worship?
The greater the vision of our spiritual eyes, the greater our response in worship will be – for we’ll be constantly filled with awe at who He is and what He does. We should be quick at each glorious display to say, “Lord, I believe” (John 9:8), “to Him be the glory forever” (Romans 11: 36), and offer Him our worship!
We desperately need to learn to “be still” and “know that He is God” (Psalm 46:10) – and fall on our knees in response to what we see. In all places. At all times. Because God is God.
*This post is an excerpt from Lesson 8 – The PLACE for Worship, from Pamela Haddix’s Bible study, Worship and the Word, awarded by Worship Leader Magazine as a “Best of 2014” book. For a more in depth look, check out Worship and the Word or purchase it here! Also find Pam’s worship blog at pamelahaddix.com and her Worship and the Word Facebook page here.
