The Heart Of Worship

There is something interesting that happens in Mark chapter 5 when a man named Jairus comes to Jesus. His little daughter is dying, and he is desperate for a miracle. He knows that if Jesus doesn’t intervene, he may lose his daughter. But I want you to notice what Jairus does when he finally gets to Jesus.

Mark 5:22-24 says,

“Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet and implored him earnestly, saying, ‘My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.’ And he went with him. And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him.”

Did you catch what Jairus did? Before he asked Jesus to heal his daughter, he fell at His feet. He worshiped Him.

Now, later in this story, Jairus receives news that his daughter has died. Jesus looks at him and says, “Do not fear, only believe.” And we know how the story ends. Jesus goes to his house, takes that little girl by the hand, and raises her from the dead.

But I want to go back to what happened at the beginning because I believe there is something here that many Christians have overlooked.

Worship must come before everything else.

Jesus tells us in Matthew 22:37-38,

“And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.’”

Nothing else matters if we don’t get this right. God doesn’t want to be someone you occasionally turn to when you need something. He wants your heart. He wants a relationship with you. He wants you to love Him, spend time with Him, and worship Him because of who He is.

John 4:23-24 says,

“But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Think about that for a moment. The Father is seeking people who will worship Him. He’s looking for worshipers. You were created to worship. That ought to change the way we think about worship. We’re not just filling time before the preacher gets up. We’re not singing a few songs because that’s what Christians are supposed to do on Sunday morning. Worship is something the Father desires from His children.

And it is not limited to music.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve gotten the idea that worship requires a worship team, instruments, a microphone, and somebody singing our favorite song. Now, I love good worship music. There is nothing wrong with any of those things. But what are you doing the other six days of the week? Are you worshiping God when nobody is singing? Are you worshiping Him when you’re driving down the road, sitting in your living room, or walking through your house? Because if worship only happens when somebody else creates the atmosphere for you, then you haven’t learned how to cultivate the presence of God in your own life.

Psalm 100:4 says,

“Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name!”

I want you to notice the progression. We enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Have you ever been outside on a really hot day and walked past a store with the doors open? You can feel that cold air conditioning coming out of the building. It feels wonderful, especially when you’ve been sweating in the heat. You might even slow down for a second just to enjoy it. But you’re still standing outside. You’re getting a little taste of what’s inside the building, but you haven’t actually walked through the door. That’s a picture of what I’m talking about.

Thanksgiving brings you to the door. You begin remembering the goodness of God. You start thanking Him for what He has done in your life. Then, as you continue, thanksgiving begins turning into praise. You stop focusing only on what God has done and begin worshiping Him for who He is. And you enter into His presence.

Psalm 22:3 says,

“Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.”

God is enthroned upon the praises of His people. Think about what that means. When you begin praising God, you’re acknowledging His kingship and His authority. You’re turning your attention away from everything trying to control your thoughts and placing it on the One who rules over everything.

You don’t need a band to do that. You don’t even need music. Sometimes I’ll walk through my house and just begin thanking God.

“Father, I thank You for being so good to me. I thank You for my wife. Your Word says that he who finds a wife finds a good thing, and You gave me a good thing. I thank You for my children. I thank You that they’re saved. I thank You for everything You’ve brought us through and everything You’re doing in our lives.”

And as I continue thanking Him, I begin praising Him.

“Lord, You’re worthy of praise. You’re holy. You’re faithful. You’re good. There is nobody like You. I love You, Jesus.”

Sometimes I’ll pray in the Spirit. Sometimes I’ll sing. Sometimes I’ll go right back to thanking Him. I may walk around, sit down, or get on my knees. There isn’t some complicated formula you have to follow.

First Corinthians 14:15 says,

“What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also; I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also.”

That’s something you can do in your own home. And the more you do it, the more natural it becomes. We all understand how habits work. You develop a habit by doing something repeatedly. Well, if you want worship to become part of your life, you have to begin doing it regularly.

Don’t tell me you can’t think of anything to thank God for. If you’ve been saved, you’ve got something to thank Him for. If He’s forgiven your sins, you’ve got something to thank Him for. If He’s brought you through a difficult season, you’ve got something to thank Him for. If you woke up this morning with another opportunity to serve Him, you’ve got something to thank Him for.

Some of us could spend hours just thanking God for what He’s done over the last few years, if we’d actually stop and think about it. The problem is that we tend to spend more time rehearsing everything that’s wrong than remembering everything God has done right. We need to change that.

And I want you to understand something else. We don’t worship God to get something from Him. We worship Him because we love Him. There’s a big difference.

When Julie and I first started this ministry, she was still dealing with serious physical limitations from everything she had been through. She was tremendously better than she had been, but she still couldn’t sit through an entire church service without paying for it physically afterward. She might make it through the service, but then she would be in pain for days.

We had finished our first tent revival with Pastors Danny and Nina Roy in Columbia, Kentucky, and we were driving home. While we were in the car, Julie just began worshiping God. She was thanking Him. She was praising Him. She was loving on Him. She wasn’t asking for anything.

Then the Lord spoke to her and said, “Julie, what do you want?”

It caught her off guard. She wasn’t thinking about what she needed. She was simply worshiping Him.

The Lord asked her again, “What do you want?”

And she said, “Lord, I want to be able to sit through an entire church service.”

Now, that might not sound like a big request to somebody who has never experienced what she went through. But for Julie, that was significant. She wanted to be able to go to church, sit through the service, and not spend the next several days suffering because of it.

The Lord told her, “I’ll meet you there.”

We got home on Monday, and there was a conference happening at our church that week. On Wednesday, Julie went to the service. And God met her there. She stayed through the entire service without the physical repercussions she had experienced before. She went back for almost every service the rest of that week, and from that point forward, she didn’t have that problem again.

But here’s what I want you to understand about that testimony. Julie wasn’t worshiping God to get healed. She wasn’t trying to convince Him to do something for her. She was worshiping because she loved Him. Her attention was on Him. And in that moment, the Lord ministered to a need in her life.

Psalm 37:4 says,

“Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

The first part of that verse is important. Delight yourself in the Lord. Make Him your delight. Make Him your priority. Love Him because He’s worthy of your love, not because you’re trying to get Him to give you something. When you’re truly worshiping God, your heart begins changing. The things you thought were so important don’t always seem quite as important anymore. You begin seeing things differently because you’re spending time with Him.

Ephesians 3:20 says,

“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us.”

God is able to do more than you can ask or even imagine. Sometimes we’re so focused on what we think we need that we don’t recognize what He wants to do in our lives. But when we make His presence the priority, we give Him room to work in us. We become more sensitive to His voice, more aware of His goodness, and more willing to follow where He leads. And that brings me back to something I said earlier.

You cannot spend your entire Christian life depending on somebody else to bring you into the presence of God. You can’t wait for the next revival, the next conference, the next worship service, or the next preacher to come through town. Those things can be wonderful, but you need to learn how to worship when nobody else is around. You need to know how to enter your own prayer room and begin thanking God. You need to know how to turn off the distractions, put your attention on Jesus, and simply spend time loving Him.

Not because you need something. Not because you’re trying to get a miracle. Not because you want God to bless your finances or fix a problem. But because He’s your Father, and you love Him. Jairus came to Jesus with a desperate need. His daughter was dying, and he needed a miracle. But the first thing Scripture tells us he did was fall at Jesus’ feet. There is something we can learn from that.

Whatever you’re facing today, don’t allow the need to become more important to you than the One who meets the need. Worship Him when things are going well. Worship Him when things are difficult. Worship Him when you have a testimony, and worship Him while you’re still believing for one. Make thanksgiving and praise part of your everyday life. Because the greatest thing God has to offer you isn’t simply what He can do for you.

It’s His presence.

And when you begin to understand that, worship stops being something you do for a few minutes on Sunday. It becomes the way you live.