How do we worship God?

Many people go to church to worship God. Denominational differences in Christianity may involve different styles of worship. But what is worship essentially? What should worship be? How do we worship God? We try to love God and all that he stands for. Love is the beginning and the end of worship. To worship we must love God with all our hearts and minds. And when we do that, we will desire to be with him always. He will pervade our hearts and minds. Every thought and every feeling will pass through his being. And when people meet us while this is going on, they will see God in us.

To worship God is to be in love with God. Worship is romance of the highest kind. The human being in love with God is what worship is. How can such love be expressed? How can a visible human be in love with an invisible God? To love God in this way is possible only when we love what God loves. And God loves the world. God loves his creations. To love God, we should love what he created. We should love one another. We should love the other person as we love ourselves. And we should love all other forms of life that we see around us. We should love this beautiful earth and take good care of it, just as we take care of our own bodies. When we do all this, we are worshipping God, who is the reason for everything.

To love God means to love what God loves. And God loves us all just as we are. We should learn to love like God. And we should learn from God, who will teach us to love, when we welcome him into our hearts. God will come and stay within us and teach us how to love what we once could not love. He will teach us to love our enemies, and care for those who do not care for us. He will show us how to love, even when we face opposition and rejection. He will enable us to go on loving, even when our love is not returned. This is the kind of love we need to learn, if we want to worship God.

We do not worship God by reading the Bible studiously. We worship God by practising the love that the Bible reveals. We need to experience the love of God, and we need to share it with others. We do not worship God by merely attending church. We worship God by loving one another, not only in the worship place, but also outside it. We should particularly focus on loving those who are outside church. The people of God should actively love those who do not know God. We reveal God to others, only by loving them, as God himself loves us.

So, to worship God we should love others, just as they are, without trying to transform them. Only the love of God can transform people. So, we should learn to love like God, and let that love do its miraculous work in the people we love. We should not judge others unfairly, and we should always remember our own sins, when we try to point out the sinsa of others. To worship God, we should be conscious of God's atoning love all the time. We cannot let a sinful conscience separate us from God. For we will sin as long as we live in this world. Let our sins not separate us from God. We should remember that nothing can separate us from the love of God. Not only should we know this, but we should also actively receive that love daily by approaching God repentantly. We should also love God back by loving what he loves, with his own kind of love, which he will teach us, as we continue to walk with him.

Samuel Godfrey George