Prayer and Worship
Prayer
“Prayer is a spiritual act, and we are waging a spiritual war. Our spiritual enemy’s goal is to discourage, distract, and cause us to doubt the effectiveness of prayer. This is why prayer is difficult. C.S. Lewis also highlights how critical prayer is for us despite our questions. He says, ‘I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God. It changes me.’ … When we start with the idea that we can do nothing to help ourselves… God can then move in us and help us through our words and cries…
“Your life, everything you do and become, is an act of worship to God…”
Here is a simple way to remember how to pray based on the Lord’s Prayer.
Praise and Thanks:
- We praise God for who He is and what He has given to us…
Repent:
- We then repent for any sins, evil thoughts, or bad attitudes we have.
All Others:
- We then ask God to help those around us… It’s important to write down who we are praying for… Then we can go back and see how God has answered our prayers.
Yourself:
- Finally, we pray for our personal needs and wants in our own lives.
Notice what comes before praying for yourself: everything else. The order in which we pray matters, because it models the servant heart of Christ. Often, we want to jump to the head of the line. Prayer must always begin with God, confession, and others.”
Worship
“Whatever we make a practice out of becomes our object of worship. Therefore, worship can best be defined as this: The highest love and adoration that we experience and express towards someone or something. One of the earliest Jesus followers, the Apostle Paul, wrote this about worship.
‘Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship’ (Romans 12:1).
Somewhere in our Church history, worship became about music. Although music is a powerful form that helps usher us into a state of worship, music isn’t worship unto itself. Your life, everything you do and become, is an act of worship to God…
Every time we gather we also focus on God and not ourselves… Christ is the only person we imitate. This helps guide our lives in two ways. One, there is something beyond us, a perfect holy being, leading us. Second, it helps us not make idols out of people… Although we have leaders in Christian communities, they are not our object of worship. This helps us prevent disappointment, disillusionment, and false doctrines.”
These are excerpts from week 1 of our course called Following Jesus. If you haven’t gone through the whole course yet, you can sign up for it here.