Reorienting our hearts to worship is a lifelong and moment-to-moment undertaking. No matter how hard we try or how many safeguards we have in place, our worship will always drift whether due to our sins or our life experiences. Ultimately, even with our best intentions and most faithful work, it God who finishes the work in us. While we may be tempted to depend on many lesser things to direct our worship, our full dependency must be on the God who calls us home.

Authenticity is incredibly important in worship, yet it is never strong enough to carry the full burden of our affection for God on our way home to him. We can delude ourselves into thinking that our lives are God-honoring because we're being genuine about our affection for God, while completely missing the sanctification the Spirit brings us on our journey.

Some of the most lauded acts of worship are the suffering and death of people in the following of Jesus. However, sometimes we suffer as a consequence of our sins against others. We must be careful to not quickly claim that our suffering means we're being faithful. It may be quite the opposite. When we learn to discern this, we can offer all our suffering to God as an act of worship.

Worship must flow from the heart of an individual, but the truest worship of God calls us to worship in community.

Christian worship in general is intended to glorify God. However, shockingly many songs reference God less while referencing self more, and much teaching follows the same pattern. While this may be indicative of narcissism in the guise of worship, it may also simply be indicative that a relationship with God is two-sided. We have a story, and it revolves around him.

When we think of worship, we often think first of the songs of praise we sing. Since the beginning of the church, it has been debated what instruments, songs, and styles are deemed appropriate for Christian worship. However, the vision of a kingdom comprised of people of every kind suggests that our songs of worship should be just as diverse.

Tradition has been a part of worship since before Christ walked the earth. While we often think of it as performative ritual, it is actually more about shaping our lives to be more like Jesus. Today, we'll discuss what the bible says about tradition, and we'll learn how to integrate them in a way that enriches our spiritual journey beyond the Sunday morning gathering.

Perhaps one of the most overlooked elements of worship is the word of God. As much as we often value this as the basis of our faith in our time, we often struggle to actually listen to it for what it says. As a result, our worship can be redirected to our own understandings of scripture instead of the God of whom scripture attests. In order to reorient our worship to God, we must challenge ourselves to accept even the difficult parts and meanings of scripture so that we are formed by it rather than it being reshaped by us.

As we previously discussed, a major element of worship is our expression of it. How followers of Jesus show their worship outwardly is a part of what draws others into worship. However, sometimes, the expression becomes intoxicating, and we can forget the one for whom we offer our expressions of worship. Our calling to follow Jesus includes expressive worship that still bows in ultimate humility before the cross.

As Americans celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Christians of all kinds find themselves at an impasse. Rather than stoke our political tempers and rely on the rule of humankind for solutions to division and injustice, fearing the loss of religious privilege, we must offer our greatest worship to God, remembering that no matter the state of the world, we have always been free to follow and worship Jesus Christ.