Day13: Worship That Pleases God

 Worship That Pleases God

Love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all 

your mind and with all your strength.

Mark 12:30 (NIV)

God wants all of you.

God doesn’t want a part of your life. He asks for all your heart,

all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. God is not

interested in halfhearted commitment, partial obedience, and the

leftovers of your time and money. He desires your full devotion,

not little bits of your life.

A Samaritan woman once tried to debate Jesus on the best

time, place, and style for worship. Jesus replied that these external

issues are irrelevant. Where you worship is not as important as

why you worship and how much of yourself you offer to God when

you worship. There is a right and wrong way to worship. The

Bible says, “Let us be grateful and worship God in a way that will

please him.” 1 The kind of worship that pleases God has four

characteristics:

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God is pleased when our worship is accurate. People often

say, “I like to think of God as . . . ,” and then they share their idea

of the kind of God they would like to worship. But we cannot just

create our own comfortable or politically correct image of God

and worship it. That is idolatry.

Worship must be based on the truth of Scripture, not our

opinions about God. Jesus told the Samaritan woman, “True

worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are

the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.” 2

To “worship in truth” means to worship God as he is truly

revealed in the Bible. 

God is pleased when our worship is authentic. When Jesus

said you must “worship in spirit,” he wasn’t referring to the Holy

Spirit, but to your spirit. Made in

God’s image, you are a spirit that

resides in a body, and God designed

your spirit to communicate with

him. Worship is your spirit

responding to God’s Spirit.

When Jesus said, “Love God with

all your heart and soul” he meant

that worship must be genuine and

heartfelt. It is not just a matter of saying the right words; you

must mean what you say. Heartless praise is not praise at all! It is

worthless, an insult to God.

When we worship, God looks past our words to see the attitude

of our hearts. The Bible says, “Man looks at the outward

appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” 3

Since worship involves delighting in God, it engages your

emotions. God gave you emotions so you could worship him with

deep feeling—but those emotions must be genuine, not faked.

God hates hypocrisy. He doesn’t want showmanship or pretense

or phoniness in worship. He wants your honest, real love. We can

worship God imperfectly, but we cannot worship him insincerely. 

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God-pleasing worship is 

deeply emotional and deeply

doctrinal. We use both our

hearts and our heads.

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Of course, sincerity alone is not enough; you can be sincerely

wrong. That’s why both spirit and truth are required. Worship

must be both accurate and authentic. God-pleasing worship is

deeply emotional and deeply doctrinal. We use both our hearts

and our heads.

Today many equate being emotionally moved by music as

being moved by the Spirit, but these are not the same. Real

worship happens when your spirit responds to God, not to some

musical tone. In fact, some sentimental, introspective songs

hinder worship because they take the spotlight off God and

focus on our feelings. Your biggest distraction in worship is

yourself—your interests and your worries over what others

think about you. 

Christians often differ on the most appropriate or authentic

way to express praise to God, but these arguments usually just

reflect personality and background differences. Many forms of

praise are mentioned in the Bible, among them confessing,

singing, shouting, standing in honor, kneeling, dancing, making a

joyful noise, testifying, playing musical instruments, and raising

hands.4 The best style of worship is the one that most

authentically represents your love for God, based on the

background and personality God gave you. 

My friend Gary Thomas noticed that many Christians seem

stuck in a worship rut—an unsatisfying routine—instead of

having a vibrant friendship with

God, because they force themselves

to use devotional methods or

worship styles that don’t fit the way

God uniquely shaped them. 

Gary wondered, If God

intentionally made us all different,

why should everyone be expected to

love God in the same way? As he read Christian classics and

interviewed mature believers, Gary discovered that Christians

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The best style of worship is the

one that most authentically

represents your love for God.

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have used many different paths for 2,000 years to enjoy intimacy

with God: being outdoors, studying, singing, reading, dancing,

creating art, serving others, having solitude, enjoying fellowship,

and participating in dozens of other activities.

In his book Sacred Pathways, Gary identifies nine of the ways

people draw near to God: Naturalists are most inspired to love

God out-of-doors, in natural settings. Sensates love

God with their senses and appreciate beautiful

worship services that involve their sight, taste,

smell, and touch, not just their ears.

Traditionalists draw closer to God through rituals,

liturgies, symbols, and unchanging structures.

Ascetics prefer to love God in solitude and

simplicity. Activists love God through confronting evil, battling

injustice, and working to make the world a better place.

Caregivers love God by loving others and meeting their needs.

Enthusiasts love God through celebration. Contemplatives love

God through adoration. Intellectuals love God by studying with

their minds.5

There is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to worship and

friendship with God. One thing is certain: You don’t bring glory

to God by trying to be someone he never intended you to be.

God wants you to be yourself. “That’s the kind of people the Father

is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves

before him in their worship.” 6

God is pleased when our worship is thoughtful. Jesus’

command to “love God with all your mind” is repeated four times

in the New Testament. God is not pleased with thoughtless

singing of hymns, perfunctory praying of clichés, or careless

exclamations of “Praise the Lord,” because we can’t think of

anything else to say at that moment. If worship is mindless, it is

meaningless. You must engage your mind. 

Jesus called thoughtless worship “vain repetitions.”7 Even

biblical terms can become tired clichés from overuse, and we stop

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thinking about the meaning. It is so much easier to offer clichés

in worship instead of making the effort to honor God with fresh

words and ways. This is why I encourage you to read Scripture in

different translations and paraphrases. It will expand

your expressions of worship.

Try praising God without using the words praise,

hallelujah, thanks, or amen. Instead of saying, “We

just want to praise you,” make a list of synonyms and

use fresh words like admire, respect, value, revere,

honor, and appreciate.

Also, be specific. If someone approached you and repeated, “I

praise you!” ten times, you would probably think, For what? You

would rather receive two specific compliments than twenty vague

generalities. So would God.

Another idea is to make a list of the different names of God

and focus on them. God’s names are not arbitrary; they tell us

about different aspects of his character. In the Old Testament,

God gradually revealed himself to Israel by introducing new

names for himself, and he commands us to praise his name.8

God wants our corporate worship gatherings to be thoughtful,

too. Paul devotes an entire chapter to this in 1 Corinthians 14

and concludes, “Everything should be done in a fitting and 

orderly way.” 9

Related to this, God insists that our worship services be

understandable to unbelievers when they are present in our

worship gatherings. Paul observed, “Suppose some strangers are in

your worship service, when you are praising God with your spirit. If

they don’t understand you, how will they know to say, ‘Amen’? You

may be worshiping God in a wonderful way, but no one else will be

helped.” 10 Being sensitive to unbelievers who visit your worship

gatherings is a biblical command. To ignore this command is to

be both disobedient and unloving. For a full explanation of this,

see the chapter on “Worship Can Be a Witness” in The Purpose-

Driven Church.

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DAY THIRTEEN:

WORSHIP

THAT

PLEASES

GOD

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God is pleased when our worship is practical. The Bible

says, “Offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to

God—this is your spiritual act of worship.” 11 Why does God want

your body? Why doesn’t he say, “Offer your spirit”? Because

without your body you can’t do anything on this planet. In

eternity you will receive a new, improved, upgraded body, but

while you’re here on earth, God says, “Give me what you’ve

got!” He’s just being practical about worship.

You have heard people say, “I can’t make it to the meeting

tonight, but I’ll be with you in spirit.” Do you know what that

means? Nothing. It’s worthless! As long as you’re on earth, your

spirit can only be where your body is. If your body isn’t there,

neither are you.

In worship we are to “offer our bodies as living sacrifices.”

Now, we usually associate the concept of “sacrifice” with

something dead, but God wants you to be a living sacrifice. He

wants you to live for him! However, the problem with a living

sacrifice is that it can crawl off the

altar, and we often do that. We

sing, “Onward, Christian Soldiers”

on Sunday, then go AWOL on

Monday.

In the Old Testament, God took

pleasure in the many sacrifices of

worship because they foretold of Jesus’ sacrifice for us on the

cross. Now God is pleased with different sacrifices of worship:

thanksgiving, praise, humility, repentance, offerings of money,

prayer, serving others, and sharing with those in need.12

Real worship costs. David knew this and said: “I will not offer to

the Lord my God sacrifices that have cost me nothing.” 13

One thing worship costs us is our self-centeredness. You cannot

exalt God and yourself at the same time. You don’t worship to be

seen by others or to please yourself. You deliberately shift the

focus off yourself.

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Real worship is rooted 

in the Word. 

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When Jesus said, “Love God with all your strength,” he pointed

out that worship takes effort and energy. It is not always

convenient or comfortable, and sometimes worship is a sheer act

of the will—a willing sacrifice. Passive worship is an oxymoron. 

When you praise God even when you don’t feel like it, when

you get out of bed to worship when you’re tired, or when you

help others when you are worn out, you are offering a sacrifice of

worship to God. That pleases God.

Matt Redman, a worship leader in England, tells how his pastor

taught his church the real meaning of worship. To show that

worship is more than music, he banned all singing in their services

for a period of time while they learned to worship in other ways.

By the end of that time, Matt had written the classic song “Heart

of Worship”:

I’ll bring You more than a song, 

because the song itself is not what You’ve required. 

You search much deeper within 

than the way things appear. 

You’re looking into my heart.14

The heart of the matter is a matter of the heart.

Day Thirteen

Thinking about My Purpose

Point to Ponder: God wants all of me.

Verse to Remember: “Love the Lord your God with all

your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind

and with all your strength.” Mark 12:30 (NIV)

Question to Consider: Which is more pleasing to God

right now—my public worship or my private worship?

What will I do about this?

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