Growing
Worship
In plain words
Worship is giving God the honour, love and attention He deserves, with your whole life.
Many people think worship means singing in church. Singing is one part, but worship is bigger. To worship something is to treat it as the most important thing in your life. Everyone worships something: money, approval, comfort, a person. The question is what.
Christian worship means treating God as worth the most. You can do it with songs, with prayer, with thanks, and with the way you do your work or treat people. Paul says offering your whole self to God is your true worship (Romans 12:1).
Go further Growing
Jesus said the Father seeks those who worship Him "in spirit and in truth" (John 4:23-24). Spirit means from the heart, by the Holy Spirit, not just going through motions. Truth means according to who God really is, as shown in Jesus. Both matter.
A common mistake is thinking worship is mainly about the music or the feeling. Feelings come and go. Worship is an act of giving, and sometimes it is a choice when you feel nothing. Practically, you can start each day by thanking God for three things, and offer Him your work before you begin.
Go deeper Going deeper
The Hebrew shachah and the Greek proskyneo both picture bowing down. The Greek latreia means service. Together they show worship as both reverent honour and a life of service. In the Old Testament worship centred on the temple and its sacrifices, and in the New Testament it centres on Christ, our final sacrifice, through whom we offer God a sacrifice of praise (Hebrews 13:15).
The Psalms invite bodily worship: singing, lifting hands, bowing down and kneeling before the LORD (Psalm 95:6). Christians differ widely in style, from ancient liturgy to modern bands, and in what belongs in a service. The Bible gives freedom in form, but asks for sincere hearts, truth about God, and order that builds others up.
My verses
Therefore I urge you, brothers, on account of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.
But a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father is seeking such as these to worship Him. God is Spirit, and His worshipers must worship Him in spirit and in truth.
O come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD our Maker.
Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips that confess His name.