I think often as Christians we may be so busy doing what we think is God’s work that we may have no time to spend with Him in order to be transformed by His presence. Yet, He created us to worship Him and to have relationship with Him. But often we are too busy doing our own thing and we forget about God and His desire for us to know Him and to worship Him.
This people I have formed for Myself; They shall declare My praise. “But you have not called upon Me, O Jacob; And you have been weary of Me, O Israel. You have not brought Me the sheep for your burnt offerings, nor have you honored Me with your sacrifices. I have not caused you to serve with grain offerings, nor wearied you with incense. You have bought Me no sweet cane with money, nor have you satisfied Me with the fat of your sacrifices; But you have burdened Me with your sins, you have wearied Me with your iniquities. Isaiah 43:21-24
When we recognize as the angels do that God is holy, we will worship Him in the splendor of His holiness and we will give Him the glory due His name. We too will want to be holy so that He gets the glory in our lives. Paul told the Romans that they should present themselves as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to the Lord and that would be a reasonable act of service, or a few Bible versions call it a spiritual service of worship. Our service to the Lord is worship and it is presenting ourselves as a holy sacrifice to Him. Our lives are to be an act of worship pleasing to God. And so, our work should come out of our worship. There is a practical example of this in the Book of Ezra.
From the first day of the seventh month they began to offer burnt offerings to the Lord, although the foundation of the temple of the Lord had not been laid. Ezra 3:6
Before they started rebuilding the temple of the Lord, the people of Israel who had returned from captivity restored worship at Jerusalem first and offered sacrifices to the Lord. They worshipped before they worked because they knew for whom they worked and rebuilding the temple could also be seen as an act of worship to the Lord. We must always put God first and be in His presence so we can know His purpose for us. Many of us want to do great works but we are not taking the time to hear from our Great God. We shouldn’t assume what God wants us to do, but we should sit in His presence and wait for Him to direct us. We must lay our plans and ideas at His feet and let Him give us the plans and ideas He has for us.
“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? To what were its foundations fastened? Or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Job 38:4-7
We should allow the Lord who laid the foundations of the earth to be our foundation because any other foundation except Him will fail. We can only build on the solid Rock, who is Jesus, if our lives are submitted to worship Him and Him alone. Then we will be led by the Holy Spirit in the ways of the Lord that may make no sense to the natural man. It is then we will be true worshippers of the Father worshiping Him in spirit and truth. Therefore, we must also be careful of the lies of the enemy that try to distort true worship and how we serve the Lord.
Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.’ ” Matthew 4:10
Who would have thought that Jesus would have been led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit to be tempted by the devil. But what Jesus did in the wilderness showed that He was greater than the first Adam in the garden. Although hungry and tempted by the devil, He withstood Satan’s three temptations and his manipulation of God’s Word. And after Jesus overcame the temptations and stood firm on God’s truth, then His ministry began. The book of Ezra shows us that the laying of our foundation may not be easy as we will have opposition. No work in the Lord is easy and for this reason it is important to let the Lord remove any impediments that would obstruct the firm foundation built in Him. Until we are rooted and grounded in Him, our foundation will be faulty, and we may not need a major hurricane like Beryl to blow down what we have built by ourselves. Our work will fall at the slightest storm. But when our work comes out of worship that is firmly grounded in our relationship with the Lord, then it will stand firm as we follow His guidance. And our work will be worship, a pleasing service to the Lord.
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