Day 2: The Invitation to Trust God Through Our Circumstances
by Joshua Lett
Scripture
“Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand… Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me.” —Philippians 4:6, 7a, 8b, 9a
Application
Worship isn’t the denial of what we see and feel in our circumstances by singing songs about God’s Truth. Worship is our response of trust in and through prayer that walks us through our circumstances because of God’s worth.
We worship God when we give an honest response to His worth in relationship with Him through prayer. In prayer we bring what we honestly see and feel into the presence of God. God isn’t looking for our perfect devotion, but our honest attention. When He gets this honest attention, then He’s able to show us His True worth.
Jesus revealed God’s worth through how He lived, died, and rose again displaying His love for humanity. God proved His love by giving us His best - His Presence. Jesus came, to make a way, for us to experience the reality of His Presence in His Ways, Truths, and Life. Jesus made access for us to experience the love of the Father, the grace of Jesus, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Jesus gave us God’s love - the gift of His Presence (Romans 8:31-32). We can actually bring all that we are seeing and feeling to God and trust Him through our worship of prayer because God is a God of relationship. The Gospel is God’s Presence made known to man. This is why God is worthy. He did what no man has done, He does what no man can do, and He will forever do what no man will ever do. God is enough. God is worthy.
Knowing God’s worth produces worship in us. It produces trust for us despite what we may see or feel in our circumstances. Worship is the ability to trust God. You may have heard the phrase, “Worship is a lifestyle.” This is helpful because oftentimes when we hear the word “worship” we associate it with the word “singing.” Although, yes, worshiping God through song is one of the primary ways we do connect with Him, yet, it’s not the only way to do so. If worship is a lifestyle, that means we can worship God with and in our life.
This ought to bring such peace to our hearts because what this means is: in our homework, in our eating, in our working out, in our finances, in our relationships, in our sleep, in our hobbies, in our meal times, in our work, in our rest days, in our sickness, in our free time, in whatever happens in our regular day to day life, meaning; in everything that we do and feel throughout our day, we can worship God. Here’s the thing about this that should bring us peace: Most of life isn’t happening within the hour-long service we have gathered as the Church. Life is happening in the other 167 hours of our week.
Therefore; in our daily circumstances we can begin to talk with God in prayer and we then begin to worship God with our honest self. And it’s only then in the place of prayer we begin to truly worship and experience God for who He really is. It wasn’t until I admitted all my pain, hurt, confusion, and gave myself permission to grief the divorce of my parents that I began to truly worship. God didn’t want me to sing a song to Him declaring that He is good. God wanted me to experience that He is good through a relationship with Him. Because I allowed my suffering to be met with God’s worth - His love. I now know then, despite what I feel or see, I can still worship. Because I have experienced the worth of God, therefore; I will and I can sing to Him a song of praise.
Worship isn’t the denial of what we see and feel in our circumstances by singing songs about God’s Truth. Worship is our response of trust in and through prayer that walks us through our circumstances because of God’s worth.
Reflection
You may have had a conversation with yourself go something like this: “Man, I know my parents got divorced and I’m really hurting, but hey, God is good, so I need to trust Him and worship Him.” So you keep singing songs week after week, reading your Bible week after week and keep on proclaiming the Truth that God is good but your heart still is hurt and never seems to change no matter how “hard” you worship. Have you ever felt like to worship God you had to “fake it til you make it?”
If you feel the need to “fake it,” you may have been taught wrongly about what worship is. Take 1 minute to close your eyes, think, and ask yourself the question: What’s my definition of worship? It’s important to ask this question, because the answer determines everything about how we live our life.
Prayer
Follow this Prayer Exercise as a way to foster a life of worship:
- Pray about everything. Prayer is an invitation to the past, present, and future momentsSet a 10 minute timer. Close your eyes. Sit and breathe in and out. Let this time serve you by becoming aware of what’s happening inside of you as you also invite the Presence of the Holy Spirit to make you aware that waiting in silence is resting and trusting in God’s greatness rather than our circumstances and our own activity.
- Tell God what we need. Prayer is an invitation to approach God as Father Express where you are and what you feel to God. God already knows but it’s important for us to process with God. Be real and honest. God meets us in our brokenness.
- Thank Him for who He is, what He has done and what He promises to do. Prayer is an invitation to remember the GospelThank God for who He is. Thank Him for the promise of His love. Remember who God is and what He has done for us.
- Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Prayer is an invitation to the renewing of our mindsContinue this process of thanksgiving by reading other Scriptures and or simply thanking Him for all the good things in your life. It’s about perspective.