Give worship

I will exalt you, my God the King; I will praise your name for ever and ever. (Psalm 145:1)

What is the most important thing you can focus on this year?

In his terrific book The Power of Habits, author Charles Duhigg talks about the idea of ‘keystone habits’. These are habits in your life which, if you get right, lead to other positive changes. They are habits that matter more than others because they can huge difference in our lives.

Worship is a keystone habit for Christians. If we get our worship life right, then so much else in our lives as disciples of Jesus will follow. Worship is a foundation to our lives: it needs to be in place before anything else. If it is rightly in place, then so much else will follow.

In our Giving Sunday this year, we looked at Psalm 145 and we saw how David put the keystone habit of worship before everything else. In this, David gives us an example to follow. Before we think about giving our time or our talents, before we give money or material things, we give our worship to Almighty God. Nothing else we might give has any worth unless it is soaked and surrounded by worship.

Let’s commit to taking this truth seriously as a church this year. Let’s ensure that we have our worship in its foundational place before anything else, as individuals and as a church. That might mean that you need to hold back from some other kinds of giving, such as time and service, in order to dedicate focus and energy to this fundamental goal. Let’s encourage one another to do just that. Unless we are worshippers at the heart, all the activity and busyness of this church will be for nothing.

As we commit to worship together as a church, let’s also commit to praying together as a church too. There are lots of ways we can do that: At Sunday or Wednesday services, through prayer ministry, at our Tuesday Morning prayers, at Prayer and Worship Time evenings, in life groups and naturally with one another. Not every time of prayer or type of prayer will be right for everyone. But let’s find the way that God is calling us to grow in prayer this year and commit to that habit over the coming months. Like a keystone habit, we will find that so much blessing and transformation will come by having this in its rightful place.

Photo by Matt Botsford on Unsplash