Day 13. Worship That Pleases God

Day 13. Worship That Pleases God.

The Bible gives a clear command to worship in Matthew 4.10 (“Worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.”) among other places. But the Bible is short on specifics. My hunch is that God would be bored to death if we were made out of the same mold and worshiped Him as if we were all cookies from the same cutter. Boring.

Warren’s example of Jesus’ dialogue with the woman at the well has got is right. We are to worship in “spirit and truth.” We use both our heart and our head, without hypocrisy and with integrity. We need to focus our hearts on him. We need to do the hard work of discerning His purpose for us.

One of my favorite authors and I believe, one of the great intellectuals in America is Stephen Carter, lay Episcopalian, and Yale law professor. I commend his book, Integrity, to you. He defines integrity with three specifics: “1) discerning what is right and wrong; 2) acting on what you have discerned; and 3) saying openly that you are acting on your understanding of right and wrong.” (page 7)

In other words, a life of integrity is doing the hard, hard work of discernment and then living it openly. For Christians, discernment is ascertaining God’s will for us, his purpose for us, what Rick Warren is calling us to do this “40 Days of Purpose.” We are to live an integral life.

Too often we limit our discernment to our emotions, our feelings. God has given us more gifts than that. John Wesley taught the tools of discernment as Scripture, tradition, (spiritual) experience, and reason. Feelings are not enough. As Warren points out, we can be sincere and be sincerely wrong.

As we place ourselves under God’s care and focus our lives on Him, living integrally as best we know, we worship Him. The response of the Holy Spirit to our worship will be to aid in our discernment of purpose moving us forward in grace. Worship, discernment and integrity are life long journeys. Worship Him!

Grace and peace,

Rick