Worshiping God His Way

We find in John 12 a story of true worship, a time when Jesus was a guest in the home of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha. As Jesus sat at the table, Mary took a bottle of expensive ointment (worth an entire year’s wages), broke it, anointed the feet of Jesus with it, and then wiped His feet with her hair. The fragrance of the ointment filled the room.

She wanted to give Jesus something that was valuable and precious to her. She wanted to show the Lord her commitment to Him. So with complete abandon, she broke the bottle. Mary’s act of devotion shows us that worship will cost us.

When we are not in the mood to worship and do it anyway, that is a sacrifice of praise. God deserves it. We owe it to Him. Yet I believe a lot of people will give God cheap praise. We will give Him our leftovers.

When David bought a field from Ornan to use for his worship of God, Ornan said to him, “Take it to yourself, and let my lord the king do what is good in his eyes. . .” (1 Chronicles 21:23). David essentially told him, “I’m not going to give to the Lord that which costs me nothing. I will pay top dollar. I want to give the Lord the best.”

A lot of us don’t want to give the Lord our best. If you think that way, then you are not a true worshipper, because worship is not only what we do when we lift our hands and voices to him; we also worship through our lives. We worship through the way we do our jobs. We worship through the way we give. We worship through everything we do. And we do it for the glory of God.