Does your Worship make God smile?

Our Worship is something that God enjoys. It is communion with Him and we were made for that sole purpose. It makes God happy to receive worship. It is all that we actually own and can give to Him. Everything else, he gave to us. Worship is our only real gift to God.

So does your worship make God happy? Or does it make Him cringe and want to move away? Let me explain. God abhors sin. He can't dwell where sin is. Therefore, if your worship is from a life filled with sin, then you've got a problem.

You see, our first act of worship, before we lift our hands and sing, is the way we live our lives. God is honoured when we choose to obey Him. He is honoured when we choose to love others and He is honoured when we choose to live right. That is our first act of worship.  If our lives don't line up to His word, His will and His commands, it does not make him smile. Our songs will be like screeches in His ears simply because they are not truth.

John 4:24 reminds us that we are to worship God in spirit and in truth. That simply means that what we say should match what we do. That is the only way our worship will make God smile.

I don't know about you, but I love the fact that my worship can make such a wonderful God smile and it scares me that sometimes I open my mouth and He cringes.

To start off your day, here's the song that inspired this post.

 

Devotions like this one and others can be found in a handy collection in Kindle or paperback format. 

To grab your copy, click here. 

Joana James - Author of From Redemption to Maturity, Trusting God with your Future,   Nightmare at Emerald High & Alana and Alyssa's Secret & Finding Romeo 

Open window Christianity

Daniel 6:10 NLT

But when Daniel learned that the law had been signed, he went home and knelt down as usual in his upstairs room, with its windows open toward Jerusalem. He prayed three times a day, just as he had always done, giving thanks to his God.

The first sentence of this scripture shocks me a little. Daniel heard about the new law but went home to pray with his window open. Isn't that something? I know what I would do after hearing about a law like that. I'd go home to pray but I would definitely keep my windows closed.

Daniel shows the kind of bravery that a lot of us (including me) don't have, Not only was he not ashamed of his Christianity, he was ready to accept the consequences of this choice. Most of us have the freedom to worship whomever or whatever we want in our countries, yet not many of us are willing to stand up boldly and declare that we are Christians. We attend church regular and pray regular within closed doors but when we are required to speak out again immorality we shy away. Heated discussions about major social issues that are changing our landscapes happen around us all the time and we are afraid to take the Christian stance for fear of ostracism. 

Daniel didn't care about being ostracised. As a matter of fact, his punishment was not ostracism, but rather death. At the time he made the decision to pray, there is no indication that God gave him the assurance that he's survive the plan the enemy had for him, but he did it anyway. 

My encouragement to you today is to live out your Christianity with the windows open. Live life outside of church the same way you do in church. Be bold about your faith, let the devil know that even when threatened, you are proud to be a Christian.

Devotions like this one and others can be found in a handy collection in Kindle or paperback format. 

To grab your copy, click here. 

Joana James - Author of From Redemption to Maturity, Trusting God with your Future,   Nightmare at Emerald High & Alana and Alyssa's Secret & Finding Romeo 

Choice

The one thing that makes us distinctly human, is also the thing that is our undoing.  Every other created being acts mainly on instinct but we human beings can choose what we do or don't do. Choice is an amazing thing. It makes us feel liberated. Slavery was built on a simple premise, remove choice and you control an entire race.


God could have chosen to create us with no choice. It certainly would have been much easier to deal with us, and perhaps the world wouldn't have been so screwed up. However, what kind of world would that be. We'd be walking around like a bunch of robots, doing exactly what we were programmed to do. When God was creating us, He was thinking like a lover. He loves us and He wants our love in return, but he wants us to choose to give it. Can you imagine being with someone who loves you simply because it's what they were told to do. Life would be pretty boring. The sense of excitement you feel when you're chosen would cease to exist. Love would become boring. I believe God foresaw all of that, that's why He gave us a choice.

Choice however, is a dangerous thing. Like I said earlier, it makes us feel liberated. The option is ours to love or not, to do right or wrong, to live or die. But with that liberation comes great responsibility. The current state of the world is testament to the fact that many humans have chosen wrongly. We could choose to love and share, instead we chose to fight for the earth's resources. We could choose to tolerate and embrace racial differences, instead to chose to enslave one another. Every day, humans make choices to do the wrong thing. We spend billions on all kinds of weapons whilst all over the planet, children are starving. Most tragically, we use our freedom of choice to hunt everywhere for a god or examples of one when the real God is standing right there in front of us waiting for our love. Choice.

A lot of us have made the right choice and have chosen to love the one true God, but that's where it starts and ends for some of us. We have chosen to be lukewarm there after, ignoring the mandate to be different, to show love and to spread the gospel. Instead, we choose to live our lives gathering worldly possessions and ignoring the plight of our neighbours and friends. We choose to walk past a teenager who desperately needs guidance. We choose to walk past our neighbour who desperately needs help feeding their children. In our minds we say that it's someone else's problem. So we continue on to church, to work, to school, to play, choosing to ignore the mandate given to us by our saviour, not recognizing the opportunities to be a blessing.

Today, let us to choose to love, to live and let live, to trust, to share and to live right. Just like a parent, God gave us choice expecting us to choose the right things, instead we broke his heart and chose everything else but Him.

Use your freedom to choose and choose wisely.

Joana James - Author of From Redemption to Maturity, Trusting God with your Future,   Nightmare at Emerald High & Alana and Alyssa's Secret & Finding Romeo 

Intimacy

Jesus makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside! Say that sentence out loud. Feels kind of corny doesn't it. Now think about it, is it true? Does the thought of your saviour stir a tingling in your spirit? Does thinking about the last time you spent quality time with him make your heart sing? Can you even remember the last time you spent quality time with him?

This morning I woke up and started my day the way I usually do, in prayer. In the midst of it, I had that feeling I usually get when I'm talking to someone of the opposite sex that I REALLY like. My insides tingled. Wow. I was thrilled. For me, that meant that my relationship with God was growing. That meant that our intimacy level was getting stronger. That meant that I was truly in love with the one person who would always give that love back. For me, that was something amazing.

So I challenge you today, what's your intimacy level like? Does God make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside? Do you desire to spend time with Him the way you desire to spend time with your significant other? Do you miss Him? Do you miss His presence? Do you miss His voice? Do you recognise His voice the second you hear it?

Do you?

Joana James - Author of From Redemption to Maturity,   Nightmare at Emerald High & Alana and Alyssa's Secret & Finding Romeo