Lifestyle Worship-Abiding

In our exploration of the meaning and significance of worship, we've discovered in Scripture so far that worship is the acknowledgment of God's worth in acceptable ways. We've seen that worship is a complementary combination of inward attitude and outward action. We've seen that worship occurs in the context of love. The foundation of our worship is to acknowledge God's worth in our lives by loving Him.

A second aspect of lifestyle worship is service.

Serving Him is the active expression of our love for God. Listeners who are systems-oriented may find it helpful to picture lifestyle worship in terms of systems analysis. In this word picture, our love for God is the input element of worship and our service for God is the output element of worship.

Service is the theme of Romans 12, a beautiful and wide-ranging passage of scripture that contributes significantly to our understanding of lifestyle worship. Romans 12:1 sets the stage for making worship a way of life: I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.

That last phrase may also be translated, "this is your spiritual act of worship." Paul is saying that one very acceptable way we worship—that is, we acknowledge God's worth—is by presenting ourselves to God as a sacrifice. Further, he says this is not to be some emotional response to a compelling invitation from the pulpit, accompanied by soft music. Instead, this offering of ourselves is to be a reasoned-out, thoughtful, spiritual act of worship.

Because serving God is such an important part of worship, we'll talk more about that later on. What we need to consider during the next few moments is something that - if missing from our lives - will make our most enthusiastic and well-intentioned service fruitless.

Oswald Chambers wrote a stunning comment about over-eager servants of the Lord. Here's what he said in his book My Utmost For His Highest: "We slander God by our very eagerness to work for Him without knowing Him."

How could such a thing be possible? It's possible because we tend to do what other people see and we tend to ignore what they don't. People see our service, so we do that - especially if our service brings us recognition and approval.

But we often ignore our inner life. Our service - and life in general - draw us away from such spiritual disciplines as unhurried prayer, reflective Bible reading, quiet solitude.

These and other aspects of our inner life fit into an element of worship that Scripture calls abiding. The discipline of abiding connects our love for God to our service for God.

John 15 compares this "abiding" relationship between our Lord and us to that of a vine and its branches. The branch is designed to bear fruit. However, it can only do so if it remains (abides) connected to the vine. It cannot produce the fruit for which it is designed unless it remains connected to the vine. All it has to do is stay connected to the vine and be a conduit. The vine does the rest.

Likewise, our job is to remain connected to the Vine. He will do the rest. He designed us to bear fruit, to be productive. "What kind of fruit?" you ask. A kind only available from one Source: God.

Our fruit is the product of God's work in our hearts. It shows outwardly as enduring qualities of character in ourselves (see I Corinthians 13:4ff and Galatians 5:22-23). It also shows in the growth of those same character qualities in others as a result of our service to them in God's name (see Romans 1:13).

Of course, real branches cannot disconnect themselves from their vine. Unlike branches however, God created us with the capacity to seek sustenance from other sources than our Vine. We can choose to tie into other popular Vine substitutes, whether it's the occult, or some other cult or another belief system that draws our allegiance away from the God of the Bible.

To do so is to invite personal disaster. It is against our design (see John 15:5,16 and Ephesians 2:10). Instead, we are wise to choose to be nurtured by (remain in) our true Vine...
...from Whom we draw nourishment (even during the winter),
...by Whom we are stabilized (even when tossed around),
...to Whom we are secondary (no matter what our fans, bosses or employees may say or write about us),
...and for Whom we are willing to wait until His fruit is produced through us (not by us).

That is abiding.

It follows, then, that our worshipful abiding allows fulfilling fruitfulness to emerge from our worshipful serving. Fruitfulness is the reason for the branch, it is the glory of the branch, but it is the product of the Vine.

"Abiding" is part attitude and part action. Attitudinally, it involves a willful choice to remain in the true Vine. That is, we choose as Christians to trust the Vine - not some surrogate - to produce the fruit without our attempting to manufacture it independently of Him.

Abiding also has an element of action. Drawing nourishment from Him is an act. Waiting for Him to produce fruit in season is an act. Choosing not to pursue other actions is itself an act. It is a conscious act of faith that He will produce, through us and in His time, fruit that brings glory to His name.

That's what worship is all about: bringing glory to God. Worship, as we have seen from the Bible, may be described this way: Worship is loving, abiding in and serving God; it is acknowledging His worth in acceptable ways. (repeat)

Clearly then, worship is not just a just a 1-hour appointment on Saturday or Sunday. Worship is a Monday-through-Sunday matter. Is this what worship is to you today? I pray that you will join me in this wonderful pilgrimage. As Psalm 34:3 says, "Oh, magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt His name together."

© 2007 John Garmo. If you would be interested in using this article, please contact us at Info@MissionToChildren.org.