KEY VERSE
“Because you Levites did not carry the Ark the first time, the anger of the Lord our God burst out against us. We failed to ask God how to move it properly.”
1 CHRONICLES 15:13
Read 2 Samuel 6:1-23; 1 Chronicles 15:1-13
The God who commands us to worship Him has prescribed the way in which He wishes to be worshipped. God reveals His love language in the description of how He wants to be worshipped throughout scripture. We must wonder if we worshipped in any other way, would it be accepted by God?
Romans 12:1 (NIV) urges us to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God and then it goes on to say that this is our true and proper worship. Therefore, true worship involves us offering our whole lives over to God; it is not just about singing, dancing or lifting our hands. True worship is about sacrifice and giving our whole bodies to the Lord. This is what pleases God.
Through our scriptural lesson today from 1 Chronicles 15, we see that we should not try to worship God in our own way. David tried to bring God’s presence in his own way and it resulted in death. David had to consult with the scriptures to find the true and proper method as prescribed by God to bring His presence back into Jerusalem. Our ways will always result in death. God’s ways will always result in life so let us seek the Lord and find out from the scriptures how we might please Him.
In John 4, Jesus tells us that God is a spirit and those that worship God must worship Him in spirit and in truth; for God seeks those that will worship Him. God is seeking true worshippers and the only way that we can truly worship Him is to do it in spirit and in truth according to God’s word.
True worship always involves sacrifice. In the Old Testament, animals or birds were used, however, God then demanded a sacrifice be brought to the altar and killed; we know that this was fulfilled in the ultimate death of our Lord Jesus Christ. We realise that there is also a death to ourselves that God requires, and we do this by devoting our bodies and lives to God.
True worship, God’s way, is what will bring God’s presence back into our churches, our cities and our countries; that is when we will see true revival.
If you desire to worship God His way, ask God now and say: “Father, open my eyes to your word and show me how to worship you. Show me how to present my body before you as I live in sacrifice and show me how to worship you in spirit and in truth.”
Author: Peter Nembhard - Senior Pastor, ARC, London