My prayer these past couple of days has come from Psalm 139:23-24 Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.
St. John 4:24, “God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” To worship in truth is to worship as the word of God directs.Jesus said in John 17:17, “Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.” Since the word of God is truth, when we worship God in truth, we worship Him according to His word. The only way God will accept our worship is to follow His directions in the Bible.
In Matthew 13.15, Jesus said, “For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.”
What Jesus said applies very much to us, doesn’t it?
“But we go to church” Yes, I know. “We are quite religious.” I know that, too. But there is Matthew 15.8: “This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.”
You see, it is a matter of the heart. Your heart is far from Him.
Mark 7: 6 “He replied, ‘Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”’ Jesus said plainly that the Pharisees were hypocrites. What is a hypocrite? The definition of a hypocrite is given clearly in the verse. “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”
The meaning of a hypocrite is “all lip, no heart”. This quotation from Isaiah obviously shows that God is looking at people’s hearts. Yet God knew and prophesied through Isaiah that lip-service religion would be widespread.
Look at verse 7. “They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.” Their worship was called vain. Worship is the expression of your heart’s love relationship with God. But the Pharisees had no relationship with God; in the place of their relationship with God, they had the thought that if they were meticulous in their rituals they could consider themselves better than others. Because their hearts were unconverted, their whole idea of righteousness was not the Bible’s teaching, but to keep their traditions better than others. This is really vain worship.
We must first have a desire to know the truth of God’s will and then be willing to change when we find we are wrong and are not worshipping according to His truth. Jesus says in John 8:32, “And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” Only the truth can make us free, otherwise we are still under the bondage of sin. We must be sincere in our worship, “in truth”, that is as God directs, otherwise our worship will be vain and unacceptable to God.
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Isaiah 29:13 says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.”
The true worshiper worships from the inside out. What he does he does because of what is in his heart.
Here are some questions for us to consider.
1) Am I worshiping God from inside out? Do I think about what’s in my heart when I am worshipping?
2) Am I the same person outside the church as inside the church?
3) Do I give God my best?
4) Do I seek God’s approval or man’s praise?
5) Do I help others worship?
https://fayannswearing.wordpress.com/2018/09/25/honor-god-with-your-heart/
