The Worship of Rules...or the Rules of Worship?

Last night in church (our church added a Sunday night service, just like the morning service, this past August), the thought struck me that I seem to worship God more intently when I'm at home in my study reading His word or when I'm listening to worship music at home. At first, I felt somehow guilty about this, that I should worship God the most at church because, so the idea goes, that's where you do your worshiping. But then I thought about Jesus' words in John 4 to the Samaritan woman: "'A time is coming when you will worship neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem...Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks'" (John 4:21, 23).

When I read Isaiah 29 this morning, a verse with a related message stuck out to me: "The LORD 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" (Is. 29:13). So, you see, the important thing is not where you do your worshiping; it is that you actually do worship and it's the condition of your heart when you worship. Our narrow human minds like to keep things in a neat little box. But God's ideas cannot be confined to such small spaces.

While church may not be your primary place of worship (mine is in my house), God wants you to be involved in a church family. We are called to encourage one another. It's hard living out in the world, so we need times of encouragement and refocusing so that we can effectively live for God in the world. Hebrews 10:25 says, "Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another."

Another verse I found amusing and significant was Isaiah 29:16. "You turn things upside down, as if the potter were thought to be like the clay! Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'He did not make me'? Can the pot say of the potter, 'He knows nothing'?" How often do we think we know what's best for us better than God does? I like this verse because it's a silly but effective reminder that God is in charge and He knows best.