Are they distinctly different?

“Praise is about God,
worship is to God.”

“Praise is opening up, worship is entering in. Praise is boldly declaring, worship is humbly bowing in the presence of a Holy God. Praise applauds what God has done, worship is honoring God for who He is.”

Some people claim that praise is ALWAYS associated with “singing loudly to faster songs, clapping, dancing, celebrating, and thanksgiving; and worship instead is kneeling, bowing, singing softly, lying prostrate, eyes closed lost in reverie.”

You and I were made to worship.

What do we think of those words? “Praise and Worship”

We tend to place limits or boundaries around things that stretch us or pull us away from our favorite thing: US.

What are you worshiping?

“The issue is not whether we will worship, but what. Even better, whom or how.”

Psalm 150:6 – Let everything that breathes praise the LORD. Hallelujah!

If our reverence isn’t for God then we must remove that which has the place of prominence.

We must build correct worship into our lives.

How? When? Why?

“Correct worship involves under-standing of what God deserves and desires”

How?

John 4:23 But an hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. Yes, the Father wants such people to worship Him.

The “truth” part is plain enough — with the coming of Je-sus, that truth centers on his person and work, the one who is himself “the Truth” (John 14:6)

But what about “spirit”? Is this our spirit or God’s Spirit? Jesus’s statement in John 3:6 helps: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

“True worship comes only from spirits made alive and sensitive by the quickening of the Spirit of God.” – John Piper

When?

Colossians 3:17 And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do every-thing in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.

Our relationship with Christ is not about a set of rules; human minds could never make enough individual rules to cover every possible situation. Instead, we are to submit everything, and every moment to Christ.

Why?

Psalms 29:2Give the LORD the glory due His name; worship the LORD in the splendor of [His] holiness.

Worship in all of life is stressed in both the Old and New Testaments and is behind the assertion that “man’s chief.”

What is worship supposed to look like?

The Bible indicates that worship is both a specific activity and a way of life.

Worship, as an activity, has at least three aspects in the Bible (public worship, family worship, and private worship) alongside all-of-life worship. And please note that our public worship and family worship should be an overflow of our private worship.

It starts with the individual.

While the external forms that our worship takes are not insignificant, they are not the essence. They don’t make it, and they shouldn’t break it.

True worship is not centered on and coextensive with the forms, but flowing from the heart. Spirit and truth.

True Worship is…

God-centered, Christ-focused, Spirit-empowered, Word based, engages both the mind and heart, edifying, and is more than Sunday.

Takeaways

What is stopping you from worship? Just because you’ve had a difficult week (month, year, life) God is no less worthy.

Remember that you ARE worshiping something, even if not God. The challenge is to find “that” and remove its place of prominence.

In the end, it’s not what we do (or don’t do) with our hands (or what someone else is doing or not doing), but what we do with our hearts and minds — because of the one who has captured our hearts and minds.

Worship in spirit