Worship:
God Is AWESOME! Let’s spend time with Him

Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37 NIV)

“Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:4-5 NIV)

We worship God because He deserves worship. And because God is awesome, our worship also transforms us to become more like Him. Spending time with God is the cornerstone of God OS. You may never have experienced the closeness to God that He created us for. Like me, you may have been stuck in an endless sin – guilt – confession – sin – guilt – confession cycle that resulted in little to no joy, fellowship, friendship, or love with our loving Father. A former pastor often said “God is crazy about you. He loves you so much that if He had a fridge, your picture would be on it.” 

The tools and techniques in this section help you to bridge that gap, worshiping God for who He is, loving Him for what He has done, and communing with Him in close fellowship. In turn, Jesus has promised to accomplish great things in our lives through His power (John 15:5). The concepts in this section are simple, and you may have done some or all of them before. But I can guarantee that if you approach God with an open heart & mind, and worship Him as described in this section, you will experience closer fellowship with Him than you ever have. Have you ever been on a retreat or away at camp and felt wonderfully close to God? We can & should feel that way on a regular basis.

Worship & Sing Out Loud

For each of these worship sections, worship & sing out loud whenever possible. Most people will find a deeper connection, a more visceral connection with God when speaking aloud. It can help with focus and clarity, preventing the drifting that sometimes happens when we pray silently.

“Sing for joy to God our strength; shout aloud to the God of Jacob! 2 Begin the music, strike the timbrel, play the melodious harp and lyre.” (Psalm 81:1-2 NIV)

Praise Him

Praise Him for who He is, for what He has done, and for what He will do, out loud and as specifically as you can.

Praise the LORD, my soul, and forget not all his benefits. (Psalm 103:2 NIV)

“God, You are good” is true, but it tends to slide right past both of us. “Jehovah Jireh, You provided when…” followed by the actual thing, the real bill or the friend who showed up at the right hour, is something else entirely. His names are a good place to start, since each one opens a different side of who He is. Pick one, then ask where you’ve seen it at work lately, in Scripture, in history, and in your own life.

Answered prayers belong here too. Most of us are much quicker to ask than to come back and say thank You. The prayer cards in the God OS app let you mark a prayer answered, and over time that list becomes a ready-made praise list for the mornings when the words come slowly.

Then don’t skip the future tense. On the mountain, Abraham didn’t say “the LORD provided.” He named the place The LORD Will Provide (Genesis 22:14), a statement about who God is, made before he could see how things would turn out. Praising Him for what He will do, for the thing that’s still unresolved, is probably the hardest kind of praise. I suspect it’s also the kind that grows faith the fastest.

Adore Him

Praise declares who He is and what He has done. Adoration is simpler, and a little more vulnerable: telling God that you love Him. Here’s a great time to let your emotions spring out.

If that feels awkward at first (it did for me, and I suspect I’m not alone), start where John did:

We love because he first loved us. (1 John 4:19 NIV)

Adoration is love answering love, so before you tell Him how you feel, spend a minute on how He feels about you. The Old Testament has a word for it, hesed: loyal love, the kind that has made a promise and intends to keep it. Psalm 136 repeats “His love endures forever” twenty-six times in a row, probably because we need to hear it more than once. Jesus painted the same love as a father who sees his wayward son while he’s still a long way off and runs to him, without waiting for the rehearsed apology to finish (Luke 15:20).

Then try this. Read God loves you slowly, one word at a time. God: the Creator of everything, who knows everything about you. Loves. You. Stay with each word until it sinks in, then tell Him how much you love Him back.

Talk to Him

Jesus called His disciples friends (John 15). One of the cornerstones of friendship is communication … can you imagine friends who never talk? God has said that He listens to us (1 Peter 3:12), and even when we don’t know what words to use, the Holy Spirit prays for us! (Romans 8:26-27) We can talk to God in dedicated Worship and prayer time, and we can talk to Him throughout the day.

“You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” (John 15:14-15 NIV)

Learn About Him

This section should include prayer, but can also include reading to learn more about Him. Pick a topic and across several sessions, dive deeper. Our God is AWESOME, so there is so much to explore here! I have included a guide you can download & print: a sheet of some names & attributes of God.

• The names of God: research His names, and meditate on them. How has that specific name impacted your life or your family’s?
• The attributes of God: research His attributes, and meditate on them. Worship Him for that attribute.
• His nature: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Learn about the unity of the trinity and the roles each aspect of God has.
• His acts. Learn about what He has done in the past, what He is doing in the present, and what He will do in the future. Thank Him for this.

Confess to Him

This may need to come first if you are feeling a barrier between you & God, if your feelings of guilt are preventing your ability to commune with God (Matthew 5:24). But it doesn’t need to come first: sometimes we have difficulty establishing our prayer lives because our prayers always seem to be dominated by confessing our numerous sins. Even the best Christians (Paul in Romans 7:19) struggle and aren’t perfect. Don’t let your relationship with God be a cycle of sin, feeling bad, confession, sin, feeling bad, confession, etc. The New Testament tells us to abide with God and allow the Holy Spirit to produce fruit. We can’t abide with God if we loathe or resist prayer. We absolutely DO need to confess our sins to God frequently, but we also need to spend time with Him worshiping, adoring, learning, listening.

Listen to Him

1 Kings 19:11-12 says to listen for a still, small voice. We want to offer up a joyful noise, but we also want to listen. This is a relationship, and the conversation should be both ways. We usually won’t hear a divine voice from the clouds like Jesus did when He was baptized, but God is faithful and will guide us. He loves us and will reward our faithful prayers with both subtle guidance and sometimes direct pushes. I have heard it explained this way: if we want to hear what someone else is saying, we move closer. The closer we are to them, the clearer their voice is and the better we can hear them. God’s voice is loud in creation, His voice rings out through His Word, and it becomes clearer and clearer the closer we are to Him.

Re-Surrender to Him

Jesus warns about being lukewarm (Revelation 3:16), and too many of us only allow Jesus to have part of our lives. Being a Christian should include all aspects of our lives, and include total surrender (Romans 12:1). Because of our human nature, that decision for a total surrender needs to be redone very frequently. DL Moody has a great quote for this:”

Sing to Him

This is a key part of this section. So many verses talk about singing. Adding music to our worship can amplify the emotional impact, and can deepen our connection with God. Follow these 4 upgrades to elevate your worship:

1. Sing out loud. (yes, even if you have a horrible voice – make a joyful noise). Even saying the words in a normal voice if the notes are beyond your range is better than trying it in silence.
2. Make the song personal. If you’ve never done this, it’s amazing. Wherever the hymn / song / psalm has second or third person pronouns, make it “me” or “I”, showing how God is impacting you personally. 
3. Sing the song directly to God. Whenever a song refers to God in the third person (“He is Lord”), refer to Him in the second person because you’re talking to Him here. “You are Lord. You created the heavens and the earth.”
4. Whenever there are breaks in the words, add in your own personal prayers. Example:

Write

Use the worksheet to write down at least the key points you focused on. Don’t let the task of writing down detract from your worship or prevent you from moving to the other sections. Recording key thoughts can help you focus and can provide a record that you can refer to later. After an extraordinary worship session, jotting down the highlights will help you to remember what to tell others when you spread the good news.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash