Gladness Worship!

“Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.” (Psalm 100:1-5)

Don’t we love to worship the Lord when everything goes according to our plan because of our grateful tendencies? We start to serve Him with everything we have as well. However, when unfortunate circumstances happen, we often do not worship Him. Instead, some of us may get angry with Him and start to blame Him because we know that God is sovereign and in control of everything. As for me, blaming God never crossed my mind when things are not working out, but I also don’t like to worship Him in those moments as well except through prayer. Instead of being angry at God, I angry with myself. For example, I don’t like myself when I fail to grow patience and gentleness with my mother and start to argue with her. Once, I literally cried. The main reason for this is that I keep on repeating it. I also don’t like myself when I fail to do what I preach through my devotional-writing (Romans 7:7-25). However, I confidently know that I am a God’s child (John 1:9-13) and faith in Jesus Christ makes everything possible (Philippians 4:12-13). Therefore, feelings and emotions can be deceptive.

Although worshipping the Lord could mean praising the Lord, especially when Christian songs are playing, ‘worship’ actually means to ‘show reverence and adoration for’ according to Google. John Goldingay, one commentator on the book of Psalm, states that worshipping and serving go hand in hand. But how can we worship and serve the Lord gladly all day long and forever? To do this effectively, we have to surrender ourselves before the Lord. On Thursday, we looked at having joyous feeling in the Lord and found out that remembering His good deeds can really help us. We actually can rely and mediate on them all day long as “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8). Jesus Christ is the exact representation of God (Hebrews 1:3-4).