Choosing a Worship Lifestyle: A 30 Day Devotional

By Tim Garrison

Choosing a Worship Lifestyle is the first title in The Worship Lifestyle Devotional Series. Enhance your daily devotions with 30 days of stories, lessons and teachings from a biblical standpoint.

Each days devotion teaches the importance of living a daily worship lifestyle in our relationship with God, while looking at topics such as the heart attitude, consecration, devotion, forgiveness, grace, humbleness and more!

Begin or end your day in a worship lifestyle mindset as you read biblically based devotions every day of the month!

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jul 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490844749

Tim Garrison

Tim Garrison is an author, songwriter and musician with a passion for enabling the church to live an everyday worship lifestyle. Tim is the author of The Worship Lifestyle Devotional Series, as well as many worship, Christian and country songs. He is also certified by The Institute For Worship Studies for the local church and currently serves in various music ministries in the New England, USA area.

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1 - Attitude Before Action

Behold, as for the proud one, His soul is not right within him; But the righteous will live by his faith. (Habakkuk 2:4 New American Standard Bible)

But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. (John 4:23-24)

I will give thanks to the LORD with all my heart… (Psalm 9:1)

What does it mean to live a worship lifestyle? Is it possible to define a worship lifestyle in one chapter? There is no simple answer to this question. Living a worship lifestyle can be a series of books in and of itself. If we seek to have a Godly attitude in all we do, that can be a good place to start. Looking at our own hearts and attitudes is a good place to begin our efforts of living a worship lifestyle.

Habakkuk 2:4 states that if we are proud, our soul is not right. If something is not right and we are not focused on God, then how can we properly live a life fully committed to God? How can we live life fully focused on worshiping God? Habakkuk also tells us that the righteous will live by his faith. This allows us to fully live in God’s Holy Spirit and live a life abiding in His power, love, gifts and His grace. To live a life by faith is to live a life dependent on God and in His provisions. When we are dependent and obedient to God, we engage in living a worship lifestyle.

John 4:23-24 tells us that in order to be a true worshiper, we must worship the Father in spirit and in truth. Our hearts, minds and attitudes must, first and foremost, be set on God and His ways. We cannot expect to be effectual worshipers and effectual doers of the Word of God if our heart is not in right standing with Him. Our hearts need to be at a place where we are seeking first the kingdom of God. Often, we seek our own kingdom and strive for our own ambitions. In order to live a worship lifestyle, we must first have a heart of worship. We must have a heart that is focused on God and His ways.

If we do not have hearts that are set on living a life of faith or a life devoted to God, then what does that say about our attitude? Are we then saying that we can live our own life better than what God has planned? Are we saying that we, instead of God, are a better provider of our own needs? If we are not looking to God for our daily strength, provisions, sufficiency and grace, then our attitude can become one of selfishness, pride or arrogance. We can quickly adopt an attitude that is not loving, graceful, obedient or one of surrender.

In Numbers 11, the Israelites began grumbling to Moses. They remembered the food they had in Egypt. They lost sight of how God provided for them in every way. They thought they had a better way. The results of their attitude and their actions of grumbling lead to the Lord’s anger burning against them as a nation. They were struck with a plague because of the lack of a worshipful and obedient heart attitude. (Numbers 11:33)

How often do we live this way? How often are we grumbling to God because we do not get what we want or the result we expect? Are we quick to harden our hearts towards God and not remember all of His provisions and care?

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart, be pleasing in Your sight, oh Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm 94:14) Let us remember all the ways God has been faithful to us and let us be thankful in return. Let us look forward to the way He will provide for our needs. Let us be excited for the way God will engage us in the future. Continual admiration and awe of God, in the past, present and future, will help us strive to keep our attitudes Godly. May the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing and acceptable in His sight, our Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer!

2 - Being Excellent

We often exclaim Excellent when someone tells us something we want to hear. When we were children in school, we would get a math or science paper back and we would be excited when the teacher would write Excellent on the page. When we see our kids with an Excellent on their homework, we are excited and happy for them. When we are moved to the point of describing something as excellent, how are we feeling at that point? When we get a good review at work or a pat on the back from someone, how does that make us feel? It makes us feel great!

If our worship and lifestyles are excellent, we can imagine in some small way how God must feel. The first thing that comes to mind is Matthew 25:19-29. This is the Parable of the Talents. The three servants are reporting back to the master with the talents that had been entrusted to their care. The first two servants took the talents they were given, put them to work and gained more talents. This pleased the master and he praised his servants. The master told the servants that they did an excellent job. He told them well done, good and faithful servant. The servants were praised because of the excellent way in which they handled their talents.

The third servant assumed the master did not want to lose the one talent and therefore did nothing with it. He was fearful of the master’s response if he lost the talent. This servant was not praised and was not awarded excellence by the master. The servant lost the talent he was given and ended up with nothing. He did not serve with excellence and he experienced loss because of it.

Do we serve our Master with excellence? In order to receive praise or a pat on the back from God, we must serve God with excellence. Serving God with excellence is a foundation to a worshipful life. In order to hear our Lord say well done good and faithful servant, we cannot remain idle and waste the talents that God has given us to use for Him and for His glory.

Philippians 4:1-9 gives us a picture of how we can easily start to live a worshipful life of excellence that is pleasing toward God. If we look at Philippians 4:1-9, we see a few steps that can help us in our lives. We can carry these steps and verses with us each day. We can post them on our refrigerators. We can place them on our desks at work or put them in a place where we will see them and they will speak to our hearts. We can use these verses to remind us to put God and His principles first.

"Therefore, my beloved brethren whom I long to see, my joy and crown, in this way stand firm in the LORD, my beloved. I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to live in harmony