Wednesday, January 13, 2021

Worship Language

I continue to be blessed by the memory of praying with a brother and sister at church, each in a different mother tongue. We prayed together primarily for the purpose of beseeching God, but also for edification and fellowship. It wasn't their words that stick with me (I admit to being a limited American), but the heart, the expression, and the greatness of our God who sees, hears, understands, and knows apart from our very real limitations.

It would seem that those who minister to others and seek God--seeing the best and worst--would have a practiced worship language. A way to reach out to God, focusing mind, heart, and body as a product of God's personalized, individual design.

The Word. Yes, the Word is central, tantamount to worship. Jesus is the Word made flesh. God communicates through His Word. The Word of Christ is necessary for growth. We are dependent on God's Word to save us, change and transform us. The Word is to be in us, abiding, implanted.

So how does the Word come out of you ? How do you say thank you, praise Him, or cry? Do you pray, write, sing, play an instrument, dance, draw, run? What is your worship language? How do you express your heart to God when it is full of praise, full of pain, full of need?

I am concerned that many of us are distracted, failing to develop skills and discipline to worship God well. To offer our best. To give of that which is costly for the glory and praise of God; which can only be achieved through sacrifice, effort, and diligence. It is not only natural ability, but natural ability combined with the Spirit's empowering for the edification of all. 

How will you invest in glorifying God today with all that you are? May He be praised and honored by our gifts of praise.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/nov/29/god-made-me-for-china-eric-liddell-beyond-olympic-/

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith; or ministry, let us use it in our ministering; he who teaches, in teaching; he who exhorts, in exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness. (Romans 12:1-8)

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