worship bound

raising of hands, crying while singing, silent prayer, singing from the top of your lungs, dancing, serving

The list is limitless on how we can worship God. But which one counts? is there a specific worship style that gets your praises quicker to heaven? Is there favored style by God?

I've been raised in a conservative environment when it comes to worship. When I was young, I can remember the old hymnal days where the song leader (not yet a praise and worship leader)would start of with that familiar phrase "open your hymnals to song number..." then the pianist would start doing its minimum one to two measures of introduction. There was no raising of hands...no looping of songs...it was precise! Did we really worship?

First of all...let's define worship! one online dictionary defined it as an "extreme devotion for a deity" If that's the case then are we extremely devoted to God? I Believe that worship is not just restricted to singing or defined by a one-day-a-week event!

The moment we have accepted Jesus Christ as our Savior, we should be worship bound! The only problem is that we don't make it a priority. The Bible says that "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!" (2 Cor 5:17 NIV) That means that our purpose for life has radically been changed! Our everyday dealings with people, the way we speak, the way we act and the way we decide will now have a higher standard to follow. Philippians 4 listed the things that we should think about...these things should be our checklist before deciding to worship.

Worship is a lifestyle...

If you ask me, we should never look down on people who worships differently from us. We will never know the true content of a person's heart, and you are not sure if God's not hearing them. It's not your responsibility to police other people or even other church's worship style. You should be concerned about your own intentions in worshiping.

The whole point of worship is to lift up and exalt God. We are not here to make each other feel good...we are here to expose the truth of God's word. Illuminate the principles behind each doctrine of the Bible. So if you are culturally influenced to worship the way you are worshiping now, It's not a problem! As long as we understand John 4:24 where it says "God is Spirit, and His worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in Truth." (NIV) Our only prerequisite for worship is that we are Influenced by the Holy Spirit and the only basis is God's unchanging truth!