Church Values: Honoring God

I don’t know of a believer in Jesus Christ who does not desire to honor God.  But the difficulty of honoring God is that we struggle to full grasp and understand what that means.  If we would speak to ten different people we could receive ten different definitions of honoring God.  So, it is important for us to go back to God’s Word and see what He tells us is honoring to Him and how he asks us to honor Him.  That being said, it is also helpful for us to study the words of others who have wrestled with how to honor God in their own lives and how God’s Word has given them that understanding.  Hear the words of J.I. Packer.  His first two words give us an good start as to what honoring God looks like from scripture’s point of view.

“To worship God is to recognize his worth or worthiness; to look God-ward, and to acknowledge in all appropriate ways the value of what we see. The Bible calls this activity "glorifying God" or "giving glory to God," and views it as the ultimate end, and from one point of view, the whole duty of man (Ps. 29:2; 96:6; 1 Cor. 10:31).

“Scripture views the glorifying of God as a six-fold activity: praising God for all that he is and all his achievements; thanking him for his gifts and his goodness to us; asking him to meet our own and others' needs; offering him our gifts, our service, and ourselves; learning of him from his word, read and preached, and obeying his voice; telling others of his worth, both by public confession and testimony to what he has done for us. Thus we might say that the basic formulas of worship are these: "Lord, you are wonderful"; "Thank you, Lord"; "Please Lord"; "Take this, Lord"; "Yes, Lord"; "Listen everybody!"

“This then is worship in its largest sense: petition as well as praise, preaching as well as prayer, hearing as well as speaking, actions as well as words, obeying as well as offering, loving people as well as loving God. However, the primary acts of worship are those which focus on God directly -- and we must not imagine that work for God in the world is a substitute for direct fellowship with him in praise and prayer and devotion.”  (James Packer, Your Father Loves You, Harold Shaw Publishers, July 1986,  P. 15.)

That is our desire for us as a church.  We desire to know, understand, and live out the honor of Him.  Join us this week as we study, struggle, and grow into what God’s Word has to say about honoring Him.