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Make Worship a Priority

King David made worship a priority in his life. You can tell because he said that the one thing that he longed for was to be with God and worship Him forever. Is worship a priority in your life? "You can always discern your priorities, for better or worse, by what angers you or stirs you, what frustrates you and what excites you. Honoring God was the utmost priority for David." I mean come on, that was the reason he ended up fighting Goliath! He didn't like the way that Goliath was talking about God! He went out there to defend His honor!

We are created to worship. God says in Isaiah that He created us for His glory. Psalm 150 says, "Let everything that has breath praise the Lord." So not only are we created to worship, we are commanded to worship. We are also destined to worship Jesus. You know what we are going to be doing in heaven right? Psalm 44:8 says that we will tie thanks to God forever! "Worship is one of the few things that we're currently doing that we will do forever-all the more reason to make it a priority in our lives."

Worship is something that covers every aspect of our lives. Colossians 3:17 says, "And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus." That means everything. That covers everything from singing on Sunday morning to filing that report for work on time to taking the garbage down on garbage day. "Understanding even the mundane aspects of our jobs as acts of worship brings new energy to our work."

Worship should be our top priority because it is God's top priority. Everything that happens is for God's glory. That is His purpose in everything He does. So the next time you are wondering why God is doing something, you already know the answer...it's for His glory. Creating us, the plagues of Egypt, yes even the cross was for His glory. "As unusual as it may sound, God's ultimate purpose is not that we be saved but that He be glorified. Redemption is not all about us; it's all about God. We are saved so that we can know and proclaim God's glory. That's why Pual referred to the gospel as the 'glory of the blessed God.' Jesus' ultimate goal on the planet was to bring God glory, why should our goal be any different? When we make worships a priority, we will see some changes in our lives.

We will have an increased awareness of God's presence. "Our worship does not lead us into God's presence; Jesus does! 'For Christ also suffered once fl ruins, the righteous fl rthe unrighteousness, that He might bring us to God' (1Peter 3:18). So while worship, in and of itself, doesn't summon God's presence, it reminds us that God is continually near."

We will also have increased delight in God's attributes. How we view God affects everything: how we think, act, and how we feel. Like a painter who is doing a portrait, we need to continually look at who God really is so that we can have an accurate picture in our mind of who God is. We can only do this by staying in the Word of God. We must dive deeply into the scripture to discover the true character of God. We cannot take for granted what the preacher says or what our culture says about God, but we must let Him speak for Himself. A wrong view of God will lead us down a wrong path of worship. We can't appreciate the attributes of God if we don't know what they are. And we can't know what they are unless we are in the Bible finding out what they are for ourselves. On the contrary, if we are in the Word we will begin to see the attributes of God more clearly, and we will see Him move in ways we have never seen before! May we be a people who make worship a top priority in our lives.

Enjoy the Journey