When you come to worship the Lord at church, your distractions are always obvious. You are not oppressed, but you are very much focused on all the things that are surfacing in your own life.
What does God really want from you? He wants you to love Him with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength.
Everything of confusion comes because other problems have been too important to you. This doesn’t mean that a mother should not be concerned about her children, or that you should not be concerned about your relationships or a financial crisis or an important decision.
We all know that these are things that require your attention—but only secondarily so, because if the Lord isn’t by far the greatest thing in your life, if you’re not worshiping Him first, then these other things become just too important. It’s a matter of a right relationship with the Lord, having a right spirit.
The Lord must be first. Sometimes you think that He is first until problems come along that swamp you and you wake up in the middle of the night, worrying. What can you do about it? Would you like to be able to cast those cares on the Lord?
In the first place, you must have faith in your worship. Focus on the Lord and believe. Believe that you’re raised up to worship the Lord. Believe what the Lord is going to do. Believe so completely the Word that the Lord has given you that nothing will shake you loose from it. That is why these various problems come to bother you. It must finally be established, once for all, that the Lord is first and that you’re going to walk with Him.
If anything can shake you out of the boat, it will. If you come to the place where you’re steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, then you’re in the right place; you’re set.
But how do you get to that place? Just open your heart and worship the Lord. In a walk with God, worship is very important.
It is just the first step of dedication, the first step of real commitment to the will of the Lord. Worship is more important than you can realize. Yet, like everything else in this world, we soon tend to do it by habit or as a routine. And worship cannot become just a habit.
When we first come into a walk with God, we are concerning with the things of this world, gravity is pulling us downward, but very soon gravity will be pulling us upward, and we will find the upward pull far greater than the downward pull.
As we start coming into a real walk with the Lord, it will always be a discipline to pray, a discipline to focus and worship, a discipline to give God what He commands, because you are always being distracted from it.
That down pull may not be strong enough to cause you to participate in the things of this world, but it’s just strong enough that discipline and focus is necessary every time you come to worship, every time you open the Word, every time you pray.
We’ll soon break through this barrier. It’s easier to work with those people who are poor in spirit. But it if very difficult to get religious people to break through to God. You must work and work with them and still they bear no fruit.
But people who come into a real walk with God, still find in themselves that downward pull. You haven’t yet broken through the gravitational pull. You’re not yet in orbit and so you must keep the thrust going until you get in orbit.
Matthew 7: 14 narrow is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.
This is talking about Christ living through you, not dying and going to heaven.
It is a narrow pathway to get into a walk with God. Your eyes must be fixed on the Lord, and not be distracted by the secondary things.
This means that when you come to the house of the Lord, it’s very necessary for you to push in with everything that is within your heart. Break through, give it that thrust, and don’t let anything hold you back from making that contact with God.
Many read the Scriptures a great deal. But they read them out of duty, because their conscience would bother them if they didn’t.
Matthew 4:6 “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’
It is not about how much you read or how much time you spend in the word. You must stay with it until you literally partake of Christ’s life in the Word.
Then you will never open the Word without feeding upon it, without meeting God in it.
In worship you do the same thing. It isn’t the mechanics that are important; it’s the fact that you focus on the Lord. It’s not what you do for Him, but that you touch Him, you lay hold upon Him, you touch the hem of His garment.
When you hear a sermon, it isn’t just to be overwhelmed and self-condemned in it. It’s that Christ touches you in His Word in such a way that you live by it, that you hunger and thirst after it more than anything else in the world.
I keep exhorting you (and I think it’s most necessary) that you must touch the Lord; you must learn to feed upon Him. Man doesn’t live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.
This truth could revolutionize your Bible reading. Absorbing all the teaching of a walk with God, is not an end in itself. The many truths you hear all focus on one central point: Jesus Christ must be Lord to you. The Lordship of Christ over your life is absolutely what it’s all about.
There isn’t anything else. You’re not learning any strange new doctrine; you’re learning the truth that fills the Scripture from beginning to end. It’s the same revelation: He must be Lord. And this must be so real to you that you can lay your burdens and your troubles right at His feet.
Did you ever have some experience that was very emotional and find afterwards that it was extremely difficult to throw it aside and come before the Lord?
It could be one of a thousand things. It could even be a policeman stopping and arresting you. If you felt it was unjust, it would be especially difficult to get over your indignation when you came into the house of the Lord. It could be that you had a quarrel with your wife or husband or a problem with the children.
When you get to the house of the Lord, you have no control over your emotions, and you can’t get focused. He’s Lord. Don’t lose your cool; just get yourself focused on Him. It is so necessary.
Until you learn how to put everything into subordination to the Lord Jesus Christ, your prayers will hit a heaven of brass. There’s no problem so great that you cannot take dominion over it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and enter in to worship Him with all your heart.
The Scripture tells us, Casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you. I Peter 5:7.
Do you have a few heavy cares weighing you down? Right now, draw on your faith to defy the law of gravity. Get those cares off your shoulders. Concentrate them, condense them down and put them all in one hand. Now with one big thrust, give them to the Lord. We cast all our cares upon Him. Then we worship the Lord.