How do we worship during the week? I’m not talking in the church…like at mid-week prayer meeting or youth group, but during the week in your PERSONAL time of worship with the Lord Jesus, what does that look like? How do you do that?
Do you do that?
Is it a matter of running your own personal “church service”? Probably not! I have found that by focusing on our amazing God, His character, His attributes like His singularity, supremacy, sovereignty, holiness, goodness, mercy, strength, power…they cause me to thirst for a deeper knowledge of Him. Books like Pinks “The Attributes of God” make me think of what an awesome God we serve and how awesomer (yes, that’s totally a word) it is that he has provided a way thru His Son, Jesus Christ, for us to be reconciled to Him.
The analogy I heard from a sermon (I wish I could remember who it was!) went something like:
If you want to motivate a man to build a ship, don’t immerse him in ship-building manuals, teach him to yearn for the sea.
Likewise, if we want to grow our worship of God, then we need to point them to God, his amazing attributes and qualities and just like the sea and all it’s beauty, we will yearn to know Him more.
So, our personal times of worship should be focused on God — getting to know Him thru His Word, thru personal prayer, thru great books and sermons that point us to His Greatness, and by His Holy Spirit who opens the eyes of our hearts to see the wonderful things of God, (Eph 1:18) and most of all – thru the personhood of Jesus Christ, His Son – he is the exact imprint of God. (Heb 1:3)
Otherwise, when we come into God’s house on Sunday – how else can we corporately worship, if we haven’t worshiped during the week?
Wouldn’t then it be ‘weak worshiping’ if you haven’t been worshiping on your own time during the week? (I know, that was a cheap analogy, but hey…you are thinking about it?!)
R. Kent Hughes says in Worship by the Book:
The notion that you can come to church on Sunday and bend your knee in worship when in fact you have not done so during the week is a delusion. Such “worship” is a spiritual impossibility.
-M
Mike Ruel 
with tongue in cheek, you are not trying to tell me that there is more to God than what I get from Him…are you? 😉
Thanks for the clear word on daily continual worship… I always need a refocusing word.
i’m finding i need to spend my time with the Father in 1- His Word, 2- prayer and 3- worship… and for me that looks like sometimes prayer, sometimes service, even obediance to His will are acts of worship… but largely for me now is thru worship music which speaks of His things you mentioned.
as i spend more time with the Father and gain more and more knowledge from His Word, i’m finding i need to spend more time in the other 2 areas to balance them, allowing who He is to get into my life and to walk in His ways thru the Spirit, not rules or things i “know” about Him. spending time WITH Him thru prayer and worship…
Amen, thank you J-9. 🙂