Good morning!
Welcome to your morning coffee! May our Heavenly Father awaken our hearts and minds today to the full blessing of what it means to truly spiritually worship him. Father, the life that you have given us is so full of beauty and grace and wonder. Help us to offer our beautiful, grace-filled, wondrous lives back to you Father. Even if we are suffering, you are still good. Even if the days are hard, you have still made them beauty-full. Even if our bodies and spirits ache, you are still with us. And your son Jesus is with us, speaking for us, having suffered with us through hard days and heart aches. In his precious name lead us deeper into a life built on truly spiritual worship of you Father. By the Spirit make us more like your Son!
Your Morning Song: "Life Is Beautiful" by Rend Collective
Your Morning Scripture: John 4:23-24
Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.
...
Our understanding of what worship really means in definition, function, and scope is, delicately put, anemic. Let's speak plainly. We don't understand worship. One of the more common misunderstandings could be said something like this, "Worship is what we do at church on a Sunday morning."
And my answer would be yes, and also no. Yes, we certainly do worship on a Sunday morning. But for many of us there is an implication that is deeply unhealthy for us. We worship on a Sunday morning, and that's it. We spend very little if any time during the other 166 hours of our week actively worshipping God, either alone or together.
God, our Father in Heaven, is not seeking someone to worship him who is a Sunday morning Saint and a Monday morning Ain't.
Our Father in Heaven is not seeking those who "worship" out of obligation, or trying to manipulate him, or to appease him so we can live the rest of our week how we want to. Our Father in Heaven is seeking those who worship him sincerely, all the time, in every doing, in every thinking, in every saying. Not just on Sunday morning.
Let's test ourselves today to see where we stand. Does worship feel like an odd obligation meant to make sure God isn't mad at us? Or is it life-giving? Do we define worship only as singing church songs at church? Or are we the church, worshipping in our very thoughts, our every word, and in all deeds?
Worship as God desires it is simply us expressing our thankfulness and gratefulness to him in how we do all things, including our Sunday morning rituals.
Do we work worshipfully? Do we drive worshipfully? Do we think worshipfully? Do we eat worshipfully? Do we talk worshipfully? Do we read worshipfully? Do we watch worshipfully? Do we clean worshipfully? Do we change diapers worshipfully? Do we worship honestly in all things?
Our answers to these questions matter, of course. But the way our spirit responds to the questions is where the true answers lie. Is the thought of worshipping this whole-life way sound like a burden or a blessing?
