Living Acts of Worship
Heads up! Are you looking for a way to love others and let your life serve as a powerful reminder of Jesus’ love? Northminster Presbyterian Church is hosting a meal packing event on June 10th to benefit UCI Haiti. UCI is a global partner of our church (CCC). Kristie and Jean Jean Mompremier, the founders of UCI, are concerned that the students in their schools are not having their nutritional needs met. Northminster has taken on a project to purchase, pack, and ship 100,000 individual meals to UCI to be distributed to the primary and secondary students at the school. You can sign up to pack meals and get all of the info at: https://amesnpc.org/april/
One of the things that we have seen in the book of Revelation is that the worthiness of the Lamb means that he deserves right or authentic worship. Pastor John Piper offers a helpful explanation of just what authentic worship is, he writes.
“We worship God authentically when we know him truly and treasure him duly. Then the word “worship” refers to that valuing, that inner valuing, becoming visible in the world in two basic ways in the New Testament.
One is acts of the mouth: acts of praise and repentance in worship services or small group gatherings.
The other is acts of love with the body and the hands and the feet: acts of love that show the supreme value of God by what we are willing to sacrifice for the good of others.
“True worship is based on a right understanding of God’s nature, and it is a right valuing of God’s worth.”
I get those two things from Hebrews 13:15–16. Listen to this amazing summary. It says, “Through him, then,” — through Christ — “let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”
Those two verses begin and end with the term “sacrifice.” Of course, the sacrifice is an echo from the Old Testament sacrifices, which were at the center of the worship and were to display the value of God as we gave up a bull or a goat and showed that God is precious to us.
We value his redemption that comes to us through the sacrifice and now through the sacrifice of Christ. So through Christ, two things become worshipful sacrifices in our life: the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name, that is, worship services in singing and praying and repenting and confessing, and secondly, the fruit of deeds.
Don’t neglect to do good. Share what you have. Such sacrifices are pleasing to God. Both of those are acts of worship.”[1]
Let us worship God in both word and deed.