Worship That Pleases God

Worship That Pleases God
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and
with all your mind and with all your strength
Mark 12:30 (NIV)

• God wants all of you. God doesn’t want a part of your life. He asks for
all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. God
is not interested in halfhearted commitment, partial obedience, and
the leftovers of your time and money. He desires your full devotion,
not little bits of your life.
• A Samaritan woman once tried to debate Jesus on the best time,
place, and style for worship. Jesus replied that these external issues
are irrelevant. Where you worship is not as important as why you
worship and how much of yourself you offer to God when you
worship. There is a right and wrong way to worship. The Bible says,
“Let us be grateful and worship God in a way that will please him.”
The kind of worship that pleases God has four characteristics:
God is pleased when our worship is accurate.
• People often say, “I like to think of God as . . . ,” and then they share
their idea of the kind of God they would like to worship. But we
cannot just create our own comfortable or politically correct image of
God and worship it. That is idolatry.
• Worship must be based on the truth of Scripture, not our opinions
about God. Jesus told the Samaritan woman, “True worshipers will
worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of
worshipers the Father seeks.”
• To “worship in truth” means to worship God as he is truly revealed in
the Bible.
God is pleased when our worship is authentic.
• When Jesus said you must “worship in spirit,” he wasn’t referring to
the Holy Spirit, but to your spirit. Made in God’s image, you are a
spirit that resides in a body, and God designed your spirit to
communicate with him. Worship is your spirit responding to God’s
Spirit.
• God-pleasing worship is deeply emotional and deeply doctrinal. We
use both our hearts and our heads.
• When Jesus said, “Love God with all your heart and soul” he meant that worship
must be genuine and heartfelt. It is not just a matter of saying the right words;
you must mean what you say. Heartless praise is not praise at all! It is worthless,
an insult to God.
• When we worship, God looks past our words to see the attitude of our hearts.
The Bible says, “Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the
heart.”
• Since worship involves delighting in God, it engages your emotions. God gave you
emotions so you could worship him with deep feeling—but those emotions must
be genuine, not faked. God hates hypocrisy. He doesn’t want showmanship or
pretense or phoniness in worship. He wants your honest, real love. We can
worship God imperfectly, but we cannot worship him insincerely.
•
God is pleased when our worship is
thoughtful
• Jesus’ command to “love God with all your mind” is repeated four
times in the New Testament. God is not pleased with thoughtless
singing of hymns, perfunctory praying of clichés, or careless
exclamations of “Praise the Lord,” because we can’t think of anything
else to say at that moment. If worship is mindless, it is meaningless.
You must engage your mind.
• Jesus called thoughtless worship “vain repetitions.”7 Even biblical
terms can become tired clichés from overuse, and we stop thinking
about the meaning. It is so much easier to offer clichés in worship
instead of making the effort to honor God with fresh words and ways.
This is why I encourage you to read Scripture in different translations
and paraphrases. It will expand your expressions of worship.
• Try praising God without using the words praise, hallelujah, thanks, or
amen. Instead of saying, “We just want to praise you,” make a list of
synonyms and use fresh words like admire, respect, value, revere,
honor, and appreciate
God is pleased when our worship is practical.
• The Bible says, “Offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and
pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.” 11 Why does
God want your body? Why doesn’t he say, “Offer your spirit”?
Because without your body you can’t do anything on this planet. In
eternity you will receive a new, improved, upgraded body, but while
you’re here on earth, God says, “Give me what you’ve got!” He’s just
being practical about worship
• You have heard people say, “I can’t make it to the meeting tonight,
but I’ll be with you in spirit.” Do you know what that means? Nothing.
It’s worthless! As long as you’re on earth, your spirit can only be
where your body is. If your body isn’t there, neither are you
• In worship we are to “offer our bodies as living sacrifices.” Now, we

usually associate the concept of “sacrifice” with something dead, but
God wants you to be a living sacrifice. He wants you to live for him!
However, the problem with a living sacrifice is that it can crawl off the
altar, and we often do that. We sing, “Onward, Christian Soldiers” on
Sunday, then go AWOL on Monday
• In the Old Testament, God took pleasure in the many sacrifices of
worship because they foretold of Jesus’ sacrifice for us on the cross.
Now God is pleased with different sacrifices of worship: thanksgiving,
praise, humility, repentance, offerings of money, prayer, serving
others, and sharing with those in need.
• Real worship costs. David knew this and said: “I will not offer to the
Lord my God sacrifices that have cost me nothing.”
• One thing worship costs us is our self-centeredness. You cannot exalt
God and yourself at the same time. You don’t worship to be seen by
others or to please yourself. You deliberately shift the focus off
yourself.
• When Jesus said, “Love God with all your strength,” he pointed out
that worship takes effort and energy. It is not always convenient or
comfortable, and sometimes worship is a sheer act of the will—a
willing sacrifice. Passive worship is an oxymoron. When you praise
God even when you don’t feel like it, when you get out of bed to
worship when you’re tired, or when you help others when you are
worn out, you are offering a sacrifice of worship to God. That pleases
God.
Day Thirteen
Thinking about My Purpose
• Point to Ponder: God wants all of me.
• Verse to Remember: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and
with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”
Mark 12:30 (NIV)
• Question to Consider: Which is more pleasing to God right now—my
public worship or my private worship? What will I do about this?

Worship That Pleases God

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What are the four characteristics of worship that please God?

What does it mean to worship God in spirit and in truth?

Worship That Pleases God

Mark 12:30 (NIV)

• In worship we are to “offer our bodies as living sacrifices.” Now, we

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