Power of True Worship

What is worship?

I have to admit, I used to think that it was meant to tell God how great he is. Simply a time to sing familiar hymns once a week – only because it felt like it was something that I was expected to do. To me, it felt like God wanted our worship whether we felt like it or not. I now understand that I had a very shallow understanding of what worship truly means. I had it all wrong. I couldn't’t understand why the Angles in heaven could worship God, only because I truly didn’t understand why and how God deserved worship.

The answer is really simple.

He wants our love.

God, the creator, loves what he has created. This is why he has given us a free will to love Him back or not. The simple fact that God wants us to love Him, erases the notion, for me, that He wants attention or recognition just because he is God - He wants our love given to Him voluntarily and freely, not just out of duty. If God forced us to love Him, our love wouldn’t be our choice and we have a word for this…its called rape. God is not looking to force himself on us, but wants us to come to Him freely. The more I study his word, the more I understand who God really is…the more I start to understand the true meaning and the power of true worship.

I recently started reading a wonderful book called “Kissing the Face of God” by Sam Hinn. Let me tell you, it has completely started to change my views and perspectives of what it means to truly, truly worship God. In one of the chapters, it talks about how the enemy sets “traps” to ground our praise. I know personally, I have experienced many of these traps in the few past months. Whether it’s feeling distracted during a time of praise, or feeling a certain heaviness on my heart. One trap I know many people struggle with is the trap of tradition. I’d love to share his words:

“Jesus spoke to the religious leaders of His day by saying to them, “[You are] making the word of God of no effect through your tradition which you have handed down. Any many such things you do.” (Mark 7:13)

Man invented religion to keep God at a safe distance. Humans substituted religion for relationship with God. They reasoned, “Here’s what we will do. We will build God a house and put Him in it. If God stays in the house we build for Him, then we can keep Him out of ours. We will also give God a day of worship (like Sunday), and the other six will be ours to do what we want. We will give Him an hour; and that way all the other hours are ours to enjoy. If we keep God at a safe distance, maybe then He won’t interfere with what we want to do.”

Traditions are those things we do because they have been handed down. Man-taught principles that are not rooted in the Word of God are the traditions of men. A man-made tradition teaches people ways of approaching God religiously, ways that appear to be worship of God in a church service – and often the people’s hearts are far from Him.

Traditions prompt us to expect things that are irrelevant to God’s kingdom. Human tradition expects people to dress and act a certain way at church. We expect worship to last a prescribed length of time. Religion says that we praise for a certain length of time, and then we worship. After worship we must have announcements. Then we have a message. Tradition says that a certain style must govern the way we sing our songs.

Human traditions dictate the way we worship. But worship isn’t prescribed by tradition; it springs from the heart and is lead by the Spirit.
In the Old Testament, the Israelites were constantly trying to worship God through tradition instead of from the heart. Listen to what God says through the prophet Micah:
“With what shall I come before the LORD and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? “ -Would that please him? What he be satisfied? If you sacrificed your oldest child, would that make him glad? Then would he forgive your sins? Of course not!
- Micah 6:6-7

In Job we read that nothing we do moves God:

“If you sin, does that shake the heavens and knock God from his throne? Even if you sin again and again, what effect will it have upon him? Or if you are good, is this some great gift to him? Your sins may hurt another man, or your good deeds may profit him.”
- Job 35:6-8

Traditions – no matter how good or bad, old or new, exciting or dull – cannot shape true worship. Traditions are those things that lessen true worship and cause our faith in God to stifle. They are nothing more than formalism, the outward demonstrations of religion, the observance of forms, rules, methods taught by men that make the Word of God of no effect. True worship flows from the clean hands and a pure heart. In Isaiah 29:13, God reveals:

“Therefore the Lord said: Inasmuch as these people draw near with their mouths and honor me with their lips, But have removed their hearts far from Me, And their fear toward Me is taught by the commandment of me…”

Traditions are formed by the commandments of men. The result of man-made worship takes the shape of an external form shaped by rules, but it doesn't flow out of the inner person, the spirit man – the heart. “