Recognizing that the Lord is the center of our worship may not be a restatement of the obvious. In the viewfinder of our worship, God may be more out of focus than most of us think.

Just because we invoke the Lord’s name during a service doesn’t necessarily mean we are worshiping. In Matthew 7:21–23, Christ implies that—along with miracles—"worship" can be performed and God’s name called upon, but Christ will still say he doesn’t know us.

I believe one reason for this is that we often glorify the Devil in our prayers more than the Lord. For instance, much prayer time consists of requests to change evil circumstances in our lives. Of course, asking for God’s intercession is an appropriate use of prayer, but not to the exclusion of another part of prayer—praise to the Lord—which is often minimal to non-existent. Yes, we hope the Lord will overcome the work of the Devil through our prayers, but if you gauged the Great Controversy strictly by the focus of our prayer talk—the Devil is winning!

A spiritual muscle that most Christians in the Western world have not developed is the ability to focus on God. In most of the Psalms and almost any prayer in the Bible, the person praying begins by focusing on who God is and what he has done. Daniel’s prayer of chapter 9 begins: "O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with all who love him and obey his commands…"

In accordance with the biblical pattern (see also the Lord’s Prayer), we need to start our prayers by focusing on God and his mighty works. The closest that many prayers come to this is "thank you for the rain, and so forth." I believe that if our awesome, risen Lord (rather than the Would-Be-Great-Social-Worker-in-the-Sky) became more often our focus, our prayer worship would be radically improved.

I have attended numerous "worship" services where I wasn’t as sure we were worshiping the Lord as much as we were worshiping the musician, or even the pastor. (This is not to pick on any one style of worship. I have seen this sin in both traditional and contemporary worship services.)

In the churches where I have pastored, I discovered that worship service participants often seem less concerned about leading the church body in worship than about getting the chance to perform. A children’s storyteller once criticized me because I reminded her ahead of time that she could only speak for five minutes the next day. It became a church office joke to pity the person who had to reschedule upcoming special music participants. The caller would usually get to hear a few choice thoughts from the musician even if the calendar change was a month away!

The concern of the storyteller and the musicians was not that the worship of God was somehow being compromised but that their time at the microphone was being compromised. And I must confess that if I scanned my feelings when I was an associate pastor and had one of my preaching dates cut, I was guilty of the same feelings—focusing more on myself than on the Christ of our worship.

Of course, worship is not confined to a few hours on the weekend. The focus of our every life action should be worship of God (Rom. 12:1ff). Paul says that our whole lives are to be a living sacrifice. But too many Christians make the false distinction between sacred and secular in their lives. No Bible writer could have understood this concept coming from a Jew or a Christian (a pagan—yes).

Secular means without God, and how could a good follower of the Lord do anything without him? A Jew or Christian’s life was divided into the sacred (every day) and special sacred (Sabbath and other special times). No Christian should be involved with the secular because no Christian is supposed to work without God. As Paul makes clear, everything one does, from using one’s spiritual gifts to feeding an enemy to paying taxes, is part of being a living sacrifice—worship.

God wants me to be not only a good pastor, but also a good husband, father, neighbor, friend, and citizen. So every part of my life is part of the sanctified life. Worship includes everything from watching a football game with my son to reading with my daughter to looking into the eyes of my wife over a candlelit meal. The Jews even view intimate relations with one’s spouse as a holy experience. Everything we do should be part of the worshipful/sanctified life of which God is the focus.

The key to having God as the focus of my worship is not necessarily keeping God in my thoughts during everything I do, but rather that my intent is to glorify God in all I do—in church, at home, at work, at play—all the time.

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