relationship

Worship God for the Right Reason

/ Clay D. / Leave a comment

Why do you worship God? That may seem like a simple question, but I believe that how we answer it reveals a lot about our motives and attitudes.

Simply put, we should worship and fear God because of who He is. 

As the our loving Father and the Creator of the universe, we should naturally revere the Lord and give Him the respect He deserves.

However, we may be guilty of worshiping God out of selfish motives.

We should ask ourselves if we honor and worship God because of His awesome, loving nature, or because we hope to get on His good side and perhaps receive more blessings?

I know that I have been guilty of falling into that trap of selfishness. 

Many times, the enemy has planted the thought in my mind that if I just give God His due, then He will cause my life to be better and more fulfilling. 

It’s like I was playing a game with God, thinking that I could somehow buy His favor if I “worshiped” Him more or better. 

This approach sounds like how we might look at our job, trying to win brownie points with the boss by buttering him up and being a “yes” man or woman.

By giving the boss praise and compliments—and getting on their good side—we might score a raise or promotion sooner.

However, God isn’t our boss. He’s our loving Father, and he wants us to love Him and worship Him out of this love as well as a healthy, reverential fear.

This isn’t the fear that he will hurt us, but fear that recognizes He is the Ruler of the universe and that all power is in His hands. 

So, if we’re worshiping Him for any other reason, it’s wrong, and we need to rethink our motives.

God is not some sort of cosmic genie who will give us more stuff and a better life if we pull the right strings. 

True, there are many verses in the Bible that tell us God gives favor to those who love and fear Him:

Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways!

Ps. 126:1

What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.

1 Cor. 2:9

The Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive.

Deut. 6:24

We can find many more such verses in scripture, but these are enough to give you the overall picture that God rewards and blesses us when we fear, love, and honor Him as He so fittingly deserves.

However, He doesn’t want us to worship Him just out of a motivation for reward. 

God desires a mature, intimate relationship with us, one that is built on love, not just His love for us, but our love for Him.

He gave us free will so that we could freely choose to love, respect, and worship Him. 

That’s the way God made us. He didn’t want robots that simply worshiped Him because that’s the way they were programmed. 

He made human beings in His image, with a free will who will either choose or refuse to worship their Creator out of love and reverence.

So, the next time you’re praying or singing praises to God, think about why you’re doing it. 

Is it because you love Him or because you hope to get something from Him?

What If It Were Today?

/ Clay D. / Leave a comment

What if today were the day that Jesus calls his believers home? How would this change how you lived out this day?

I, for one, know that I would feel “unready” to say the least. There are so many things in life that I had always intended to do for God, that I have never gotten around to doing. 

There are so many people that I’ve never talked about the gospel with—people of other faiths that I care about and would want to be included in the family of believers before it’s too late. 

You might then ask why I don’t simply get it together and talk to these people now, while there’s still time. 

That’s a very good question. Perhaps it’s fear that’s stopping me—the anxiety of possible rejection on their part. 

What about you? What would you do differently today to prepare for Jesus’ return? Whatever it is, make plans to go ahead and do it while you still can.

The truth is, no one knows when Jesus will come back, and we all have a list of things we could work on before that time comes.

But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. 

Matthew 24:36

Not even Jesus knows when He is coming back!

Much of your to-do list probably revolves around relationships—righting neglected relationships or forming new ones in the furthering of the gospel and creating goodwill within our community.

So, maybe we should just act like Jesus is coming back today. We would certainly accomplish more for the gospel than we currently are. 

Living our lives like it could be anytime would revolutionize our faith and turn many people around us onto the gospel.

Today is a great day to start living like that.

Exercise Your Faith Daily

/ Clay D. / Leave a comment

When it comes to faith, sometimes you just have to do it. Exercise your faith, that is. 

There may be times when we don’t feel like trusting God or believing the promises that are found in the Bible.

But that doesn’t give us an excuse to be lazy in our faith. 

After all, there are many things in life that we don’t feel like doing but we do them anyway.

Take work, for example. If we didn’t have to roll out of bed every morning and head into the office (or make our way to the assembly line, or hit the road), we probably wouldn’t do it. 

We have to work, however, because we need money to pay for food, housing, clothes, etc.

We should view acting in faith the exact same way. 

Treat faith just as you would food and water—we need it to survive. And we should be exercising our faith so that it gets stronger and deeper.

The more we use our faith, the more deeply rooted it becomes.

Our faith will become more valuable to us the stronger it is. 

So that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire.

1 Peter 1:7a

Not that faith is all about what we can get out of it. Rather, faith is a representation of our relationship with God. 

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

Heb. 11:6

So, if we live our lives in a manner that’s pleasing to God, seeking Him and striving to deepen our relationship with Him, we can be confident that our faith will grow and our lives will be more enriched.

And it all starts by simply “just doing it.” Big faith always starts out small. Not many of us have super duper faith that is so deep that there is no room for growth.

But, if we take the little faith we have and use it every day to trust God, it will grow.

Focus on the promises of God—there are loads of them found in the Bible.    

For example, this is one of my favorite verses:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths

Prov. 3:5-6

Or,

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.

James 1:5

These are just two of the hundreds of promises God has made to us. He is waiting for us to step out in faith and lean on Him. 

So, go ahead and put your faith in the Almighty Creator of the Universe, even if you don’t feel like it. 

You can’t go wrong doing so.