Seize the Moment – Day 632
Worship Habits!
Good morning! This is Pastor Jerry Ingalls from New Castle First Baptist Church and today is Thursday, December 9.
Have you ever had to change a long-established habit?
For athletes, it’s one thing to learn a new skill, it is all together another thing to break a bad habit.
In Deuteronomy 12:4-5, 8, Moses made it clear that God was going to be breaking some bad habits of worship, by establishing one central place of worship in the Promised Land:
You shall not act like this toward the Lord your God. But you shall seek the Lord at the place which the Lord your God will choose from all your tribes, to establish His name there for His dwelling, and there you shall come. … You shall not do at all what we are doing here today, every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes.
I can almost hear the people’s response to Moses, “But we’ve always done it this way!”
The people of God were surrounded by the Canaanites who worshipped God in high places and on altars set about wherever they wanted. These were the worship practices of the ancient near eastern civilizations. God, like a good coach, was announcing to His athletes that it was time to break some bad habits!
Did you know that Jesus made the same kind of announcement when He came to bring all the nations back to God?
In response to a Samaritan woman’s direct question about worship practices, Jesus replied in John 4:23-24 that it was no longer about being at a right location, but about having a sincere heart: “But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
Seize the moment and worship God with a sincere heart! Wherever and whenever you worship God, do so full of spirit and truth!