The Purpose Driven Life(16)

DAY EIGHT: PLANNED FOR GOD’S PLEASURE



There is no such thing as “Christian” music; there are only Christian lyrics. It is the words that make a song sacred, not the tune. There are no spiritual tunes. If I played a song for you without the words, you’d have no way of knowing if it were a “Christian” song.

Worship is not for your benefit. As a pastor, I receive notes that say, “I loved the worship today. I got a lot out of it.” This is another misconception about worship. It isn’t for our benefit! We worship for God’s benefit. When we worship, our goal is to bring pleasure to God, not ourselves.

If you have ever said, “I didn’t get anything out of worship today,” you worshiped for the wrong reason. Worship isn’t for you. It’s for God. Of course, most “worship” services also include elements of fellowship, edification, and evangelism, and there are benefits to worship, but we don’t worship to please ourselves. Our motive is to bring glory and pleasure to our Creator.

In Isaiah 29 God complains about worship that is half-hearted and hypocritical. The people were offering God stale prayers, insincere praise, empty words, and man-made rituals without even thinking about the meaning. God’s heart is not touched by tradition in worship, but by passion and commitment. The Bible says, “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.”5

Worship is not a part of your life; it is your life. Worship is not just for church services. We are told to “worship him continually”6 and to “praise him from sunrise to sunset.”7 In the Bible people praised God at work, at home, in battle, in jail, and even in bed! Praise should be the first activity when you open your eyes in the morning and the last activity when you close them at night.8 David said, “I will thank the Lord at all times. My mouth will always praise him.”9

Every activity can be transformed into an act of worship when you do it for the praise, glory, and pleasure of God. The Bible says, “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”10 Martin Luther said, “A dairymaid can milk cows to the glory of God.”

How is it possible to do everything to the glory of God? By doing everything as if you were doing it for Jesus and by carrying on a continual conversation with him while you do it. The Bible says, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.”11

This is the secret to a lifestyle of worship—doing everything as if you were doing it for Jesus. The Message paraphrase says, “Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.”12 Work becomes worship when you dedicate it to God and perform it with an awareness of his presence.

When I first fell in love with my wife, I thought of her constantly: while eating breakfast, driving to school, attending class, waiting in line at the market, pumping gas—I could not stop thinking about this woman! I often talked to myself about her and thought about all the things I loved about her. This helped me feel close to Kay even though we lived several hundred miles apart and attended different colleges. By constantly thinking of her, I was abiding in her love. This is what real worship is all about—falling in love with Jesus.


DAY EIGHT

THINKING ABOUT MY PURPOSE





Point to Ponder: I was planned for God’s pleasure.





Verse to Remember: “The LORD takes pleasure in his people.” Psalm 149:4a (TEV)





Question to Consider: What common task could I start doing as if I were doing it directly for Jesus?





9

What Makes God Smile?


May the LORD smile on you…

Numbers 6:25 (NLT)





Smile on me, your servant; teach me the right way to live.

Psalm 119:135 (Msg)





The smile of God is the goal of your life.

Since pleasing God is the first purpose of your life, your most important task is to discover how to do that. The Bible says, “Figure out what will please Christ, and then do it.”1 Fortunately, the Bible gives us a clear example of a life that gives pleasure to God. The man’s name was Noah.

In Noah’s day, the entire world had become morally bankrupt. Everyone lived for their own pleasure, not God’s. God couldn’t find anyone on earth interested in pleasing him, so he was grieved and regretted making man. God became so disgusted with the human race that he considered wiping it out. But there was one man who made God smile. The Bible says, “Noah was a pleasure to the Lord.”2