Thoughts on Daily Worship

Too many think of "worship" as something they do only when they are assembled with others in a church service. How wrong! What a pity!

Worship is both a delight and a duty. If it is only the latter, it often becomes a drudgery, something to be dreaded.

Worship is not entertainment. It is in no way pleasing to the body or to the natural man.

Worship, though it employs the physical faculties, is an action of the soul and spirit, of the heart and mind.

The chief elements of worship are

1) exalting and praising God in thought and in word
2) expressing gratitude to God for his gifts and graces
3) praying to God and interceding for self and others

I do not consider baptism, the Lord's Supper, tithing, or even preaching, to be acts of "worship." They are duties and privileges. But not all such acts of obedience are acts of worship.

Worship is to occur in a temple under the supervision and help of priests.

In the new testament, "temple" is used in two senses: 1) the "church" proper, the assembly of believers gathered together for worship, and 2) the individual believer.

In either case, whether of the individual temple or the collective temple, a priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, officiates.

I daily worship God in the temple of my body. I delight to do so. I have often found more religious joy in worship in my own private temple than I have in most church worship services that I have attended.

If someone asks "where do you worship?" what can we say? Would it not surprise them to hear you say "I worship in the temple of my body"? Your are in that temple, as a believer, all the time! You may behave well in the "house of God" (temple) on Sunday in a church congregation, but do you behave well in the body in which you reside, which, if the Spirit of God dwell there, is a temple?

If your worship to God is only on Sunday, and not a regular habit, then I suspect that there is something amiss in your union with Christ. God, our Ebenezer, help us!

Said Spurgeon (emphasis mine):

"The whole of the Christian’s life, consisting as it must do of dealings with the invisible God through Jesus Christ by his heart, is a life of worship, and when at last he comes to die, you perceive that his worship will not cease with death, because it has always been spiritual, and did not depend upon the body. So that while the outward man faileth him, the inward spiritual man grows more strong in devotion than ever it was before; and when at last the spirit leaves its earthly tenement, and is disembodied, it has still a song for God, and throughout eternity its spiritual worship can continue; which worship must have been suspended if it had been connected with the body, and not with the immortal part of man." ("True Spiritual Worship" - see here)

He also said:

"Humbly to tremble before God, to confess sin before him, to believe him, to love him — this is spiritual worship!"