God's Order in Worship

Why worship God?

"The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works" (Psalm 145:9).

The Lord is good to all because the Lord is good.

Each of us knows the Lord is good because we have experienced it.

Therefore, He is worthy of praise -- our praise!

All the Lord has done, is doing, and will do is covered by and immersed in His tender mercies. All of it. We can rest in that, even when we go through life experiences that tear, break, crush, and hurt us. Especially when we go through such times do we need to remember and prop ourselves up against that certainty.

The Lord is good to all and in that goodness He works in tender, merciful ways.

Such goodness, tenderness, and mercy assure us that we can confidently and whole-heartedly cast ourselves upon Him. With all assurance and trust we can serve Him with utter abandon, holding back nothing because He is worthy of that kind of surrender and that kind of service.

Such goodness, tenderness, and mercy should draw from us words and lives that praise Him. So how have you blessed God today? And what praise has He received from me today? He deserves it, you know.

He deserves to be greatly praised -- "Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised" (Psalm 145:3).

He deserves to have His works praised from one age group to another -- "One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts" (Psalm 145:4).

He deserves to have people review His past goodness -- "They shall abundantly utter the memory of thy great goodness" (Psalm 145:7).

He deserves to have His people be a source of blessing to Him by their lives -- "thy saints shall bless thee" (Psalm 145:10).

He deserves all that because He alone has earned it. He is worthy! Will I commit myself to giving Him at least a small portion of what He deserves?

"Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name; worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness" (Psalm 29:2).

Let my praise of Him be reinforced, magnified, and made valuable by a life that is beautiful it its holiness (ie being set apart for Him).

Praising and blessing a holy God makes the most impact on God and others when backed and made richer by a holy life. So ensure that your words and your life match! If my demeanor and countenance suggest something other than praise to God, then my hearer will be turned off.

"Can the world see Jesus when they look at your life?"

Testing, testing . . . one, two, three . . . .

Worship requires thinking. Or to put it another way, thinking leads to worship. (We saw that above already.) Interestingly, worship leads to further thinking.

Speech is that way also -- it requires thinking and it leads to further thinking. And reading is that way as well. And music. And writing.

Thoughts go into and come from worship, speech, reading, music, and writing..

So what am I thinking?

And am I testing my thinking?

• Thoughts acceptable to God (Psalm 19:14).

• Thoughts surrendered to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).

• Thoughts meeting the "these things" requirements of Philippians 4:8.

• Thoughts transformed by a renewed mind (Romans 12:2).

In 1 John 4:1, God tells me to "try the spirits" to determine if they come from God. So what is the spirit of my worship? And of my speech? And of my reading? And of my music? And of my writing? If it isn't of God, what am I to do?

"Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the LORD" (Lamentations 3:40).

"Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts" (Psalm 139:23).

"Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me" (Psalm 51:10).