A CALL TO DIE BOOK - Day 21
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DAY <strong>21</strong>: true worship<br />
His honesty was a step toward forgiveness and healing. When you sing<br />
praises to God, allow him to show you any sin you haven’t dealt with<br />
yet, and thank him for his forgiveness.<br />
2. Let the songs be the cry of your heart.<br />
When you sing to Jesus, “You are my everything,” you may realize that<br />
he doesn’t have your whole heart. But use the song to tell him that you<br />
want him to be your everything. Make the song your prayer.<br />
3. Let the song be a benchmark of integrity.<br />
Think about the words and the message they express. If they don’t<br />
communicate your heart, and if you don’t want to use the song as a<br />
prayer for God to change you, be honest about it. Don’t sing. I hope<br />
some of us will have the courage to close our mouths and sit down<br />
when a song doesn’t match our heart’s desire. When those around<br />
you are singing, “Lord, you are more precious than silver,” be honest<br />
with God and with yourself about the condition of your heart. If you<br />
want your heart to change, sing passionately. If you’d rather value<br />
other things more than Jesus, don’t sing. Worship in spirit and truth. Be<br />
authentic in Your heart. God can handle your honesty, and being real<br />
with him may be a turning point in your walk of faith.<br />
4. Let the song be translated into action.<br />
When a song talks about crying out to God, take some time to be<br />
alone with God to pray. When a song encourages you to serve God<br />
by helping others, take steps to help someone you know. When a<br />
song describes the love Christians have for one another, choose<br />
to listen to someone you’ve tried to avoid, or offer a kind word to<br />
someone who isn’t so cool. If you’ve come back from a retreat or<br />
some other terrific spiritual experience, it’s easy to drift back into the<br />
“same old same old” patterns of life. Don’t let that happen. Let your<br />
life be consumed with “walking worship.” Let the beauty and power<br />
of the songs you sing change how you treat people. Don’t go back<br />
and show the church “how committed” you are by demanding that<br />
they change from their hymnals to new contemporary worship books.<br />
Don’t demonstrate your “passion for Jesus” by standing up during<br />
one of the songs on Sunday morning and raising your hands-and<br />
demanding that others do it, too. Instead, find some elderly widow<br />
in the church and cut her grass for the summer, or rake her yard all<br />
winter. For no pay. Do it as an act of worship to God, and don’t tell<br />
anybody in the world about it. If you call attention to yourself, you’re<br />
doing it for your own glory, not God’s.Sometimes it is wrong to do the<br />
right thing. That happens when we do the right thing for the wrong<br />
reason. Serving God for selfish reasons (to get people to notice how<br />
spiritual we are) is sin, not worship. Don’t do it! In one of his letters to<br />
Timothy Paul described a list of sins. The last one in the list was people<br />
who are “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God-having a form of<br />
godliness but denying its power.<br />
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