Do you love worshipping God?
Do you love getting up for work on a Monday morning?
If you don't love getting up for work on Monday morning then you can't love worshipping God.
Why?
Because getting up for work on Monday morning IS worshipping God!

How and where do you learn to worship?
At church on a Sunday morning? In your quiet times? With a guitar in your hands? In the car with a worship CD playing?
No (although they can all be part of it).
24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in whatever you're doing, wherever you are - not by going around singing worship songs all day long, but by doing what you do, and doing it all to God's glory.

The measure of your worship is not the quality or volume of your singing. It's not how you perform in church on Sunday morning, or in your quiet times. It's the way you live your life 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. THAT determines the quality of your worship, because that IS your worship!

"So you want to worship God?...
Go and wash the dishes!"

"You want to worship God?...
Clean the kitchen! Mop the floor! Write that essay! Get up in time for work or for lectures! Phone that friend you've not spoken to for months!...."

~~

The truth of this struck me so powerfully recently. What we do in church in the "worship time" is really only 1% of our worship. The worship time quite literally lasts from the moment I become a follower of the Lord till the moment I die... and then on for all of eternity!!

Over the last couple of years I have had a passionate desire to go deeper in my worship, but recently God spoke to me on this very issue: "If you want to be a worshipper... if you want to learn how to worship... if you want to go deeper in your worship... then start to LIVE WORSHIP!!!"

Romans 12v1 talks about presenting our bodies as living sacrifices as our act of worship. Yet most of the time my focus has still been mainly on the musical side of worship (the 1%). I overlook some other things or don't put much effort into them in my haste to get to church or have some time where I can get out my guitar and 'worship'.

Yet God is saying to make EVERY part of my life an act of worship, quite literally... to put the same care and concern and effort and passion as I put into the music on a Sunday into EVERYTHING I do, and to present it all - my whole life - as my worship to God. I've often quoted the passage about loving God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength. Yet I often only think of it with reference to Sunday morning or to the 'direct' expression of my love and worship to God, when actually it applies to everything we do in life.

I've heard all this so many times before, but this was the first time it really hit home to me just how real this is. It's not just that our worship on Sunday is 'backed up' or 'validated' by our lifestyle. Our lifestyle IS our worship, and what we do on Sunday or in those times of 'direct communication' with God is just a tiny percentage of the bigger picture! Often, particularly 'charismatic' Christians, we have put the emphasis of worship on the 1% and seen the 99% in relation to this, as something that flows out of it. In reality, God is calling us to put the emphasis back where it belongs - on the 100% and to see the 1% as simply a part of the bigger picture.

With this perspective, I can actually ENJOY the ordinary, routine, mundane tasks of day to day life JUST AS MUCH AS I ENJOY SINGING WORSHIP SONGS... because it's ALL worship, and I love worship... because I love God and I want to give Him the very best I possibly can!!

So... let's worship!!

Matt Ots