Dr. Patricia Bailey-Jones
Remember how life was before things became so demanding and complicated? God wants us to go back to a place of simplicity in our walk with Him. He wants us to lead an uncomplicated life by following His appropriately simple method of listening to what He tells us, then doing it. This is easy when we know how to worship Him in spirit and truth.
Some of us think of "worship" as the activities in the worship service we attend on Sunday and, for some of us, on Wednesday evening. We may think of worship as the slow songs we sing to usher us into the Lord's presence or the preliminaries before the delivery of the message of God's Word.
To us, worship may be singing the songs projected on a screen or the traditional songs, so poetically proclaiming God's glory and might, printed in hymnbooks. We may think of worship as such supernatural manifestations in a service as a "glory cloud" rolling in, the gifts of the spirit in operation, people falling under the power of God, intensely dancing in the Spirit as David did, or waiting in silence before the Lord.
God does not require us to follow a sequence of rituals to enter His presence. Of course, we are to assemble ourselves together and let all things be done decently and in order, as Hebrew 10:25 and 1 Corinthians 14:40 tells us.
As long as traditions and rituals in a service invite God's presence, they fulfill the purpose for which they were established. But He does not require a song or a hymn, or a ceremonial offering for us to enter His presence. As we have seen, all that He requires is for us to worship Him in spirit and truth by coming clean before Him and allowing Him to wash us with the water from the laver of His Word.
As we saw before, God is interested in our heart. For God to be able to do everything He wants to do for us and through us, we must have our heart completely open to Him. When our confidence and trust are in Him and we keep ourselves open to Him by admitting any shortcomings that we need His help in handling instead of trying to hide them, we are positioned to hear from Him and obey.
A lifestyle of hearing and obeying God simplifies life.
Satan tries to complicate our life as much as possible to keep us out of close fellowship with God. When we aren't in close fellowship with God, we don't hear the instructions He is trying to give us, and we do things according to the way we think they should be done.
When we follow our way, often different from the direction God is trying to give us, we complicate our life even more by adding more things to do to the things He intended.
The ministry of Dr. Patricia Bailey-Jones has created a tremendous impact for more than 25 years in over 100 countries around the world, bringing deliverance and salvation to countless thousands through Master's Touch Ministries, a mission outreach that has headquarters in North Carolina, Los Angeles, and London, England. For more information about Dr. Bailey Jones, log onto www.mtmintl.org
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