Worship is our highest calling as believers.
Our highest calling isn’t being a pastor or an evangelist. Not even being a missionary. Our highest calling isn’t our husband or children, it’s not the Bible study we lead or anything else we do.
At the end of our life it won’t matter if we were successful at anything else, even at leading people to Jesus.
Our highest calling and the most important thing we’ll ever do in this life is to worship Jesus.
It stands to reason, then, that Satan will do all he can to distract us from our highest calling … or distort that calling in some way.
Worship shouldn’t just be a part of our daily devotion, as believers, it should be what we do 24/7. But in order for us to this, there are two things we need to know.
Here are two things we need to know about worship.
1. We need to redefine worship.
This culture has distorted the word worship. What the Bible calls worship and what we call worship are two very different things. The Bible’s definition of worship is broad and all encompassing of everything and anything we do in and through our lives that brings Christ worth and value.
This culture’s definition of worship is that 20-30 minute period of music before the sermon, or a marketed style of popular Christian music.
The fact is that we have cheapened the word worship in our culture and made it almost worthless. Worship has become more about me and how it makes me feel than it is about God and Him being glorified.
The very word worship means to attribute worth to. But so often when we talk about worship we say how it made us feel … as if somehow worship exists to make us feel good, and not to exalt Jesus Christ on the earth.
We’ve elevated worship leaders and their bands to a celebrity status so that every week they take front and center stage, complete with light shows and state-of-the-art sound equipment, so that their professional sounds are well-amplified.
What we’ve defined as worship today is idolatry. We worship the music, the atmosphere, the band, the songs and our feelings. We’ve cheapened the word worship to be made something for our own consumption.
It’s time we redefine worship; or rather, it’s time we return to the original meaning of worship.
Worship should be all about God.
100% God and 0% us. It shouldn’t concern us at all how worship makes us feel. What should be our number one concern is that God is exalted and glorified, that He is front and center, that He is made famous and that our name is all but obliterated from the show.
But we need to do something more…
2. We need to remove the labels from our lives.
So many Christians live their lives with labels on everything they do.
- I get up in the morning and have devotions, that is spiritual
- I take my kid to hockey practice, that is secular
- I play my favorite Christian CD in the car, that is spiritual
- I go to coffee with my unsaved neighbor and talk about gardening, that is secular
You get the picture.
We use these labels for our spiritual and secular activities, when in fact anything the child of God does should be spiritual and everything an unsaved person does is secular.
God didn’t create our live to be compartmentalized.
When we received Christ as our Savior, the Holy Spirit didn’t come in our life to occupy a compartment. He came in our life to take the whole thing over!
So everything we do—whether singing a Christian song, playing softball, grocery shopping or praying with a dear friend—is all worship because it all glorifies Jesus!
But this means one very serious thing for all believers: It means that if we are currently participating in an activity that doesn’t glorify Jesus, we need to stop.
If our ultimate calling is to glorify Jesus, then we need to take care that we don’t do those things that steal His glory. We need to be sure that what we’re doing doesn’t defame His name.
Over the past two months we’ve looked at the elements of worship:
and now we see that the most important thing we’ll ever do in life is worship God.
I don’t know about you, but at the end of my life I don’t want people saying, “Rosilind was a great ___________ (wife, mom, daughter, blogger, writer, Bible study leader…) I want them to say, “Rosilind was a great worshipper of Jesus.” That’s what I want people to know about me, that everything I say and do exalts Christ and Christ alone!
Here is one more article on worship I wrote recently that still sits heavy on my heart:
Rosilind Jukic, a Pacific Northwest native, is a missionary living in Croatia and married to her Bosnian hero. Together they live with their two active boys where she enjoys fruity candles, good coffee and a hot cup of herbal tea on a blustery fall evening. Her passion for writing led her to author her best-selling book The Missional Handbook. At A Little R & R she encourages women to find contentment in what God created them to be. You can also find her at Missional Call where she shares her passion for local and global missions. She can also be found at on a regular basis. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google +.
Janet Perez Eckles 
Shawn Akers 
Abby Trivett 
