The Discipline of Worship - Part 2

Worship should be a continuous part of the Christian's life. We shouldn't set aside a portion of our day for worship and then not 'worry' about it for the rest of the day. Instead, we should always be looking for opportunities to bless the name of the Lord.
There are hundreds of opportunities for us to worship throughout our days. I am blessed every morning by driving past Lake Michigan on my way to school. I am amazed that it looks different every day, rough and gray yesterday, calm and bright blue today, then green and deep blue tomorrow. If I am looking for opportunities to worship, instead of simply enjoying the view, I can praise God for giving it to me. I can thank Him for His grace in allowing me to see it and appreciate it and marvel at His involvement with creation.
If I am running late for work or church and all the lights are green, I should take a moment to thank God for making it so. If all the lights are red, instead of getting anxious and angry, I can worship God being a God who keeps His promises - specifically the one where He promises never to give us more than we can handle. I use being late as an example because I am a spaz about being on time. Being late somewhere is one of the worst things I can imagine. :)
The basic point is to be looking for ways to worship God throughout the day. Look for times where it is consistently hard to worship and find a way to make it easier
For example, I am not a morning person. If I had my way, the world would stay up until 3am and not wake up until 11am. That would be great! Unfortunately, that is not the way it works and I usually have to get up at (gasp!) 7am to get to school on time. By the time I am in my car and on my way to school I really hate the world. So I got in the habit of making sure that I had Christian music in my cd player the night before set to a song that praises God for who He is. When I get in the car, and hear the music, it helps me tremendously to bring my heart and mind under control and focus it on worship. We all have bad times, but if we are looking for ways to worship in those bad times, it will be so much easier.
Attending church is a really obvious way to worship. Most people would agree that that is the main purpose of attending church. We sing before hearing the sermon at my church (and pretty much every church I've ever heard of) which is great in helping us to prepare our hearts for worship. But a lot of people I talk to think that that is the end of the worship. Once the singing stops, so does the worship. I can still remember a time last fall. I decided to try going to InterVarsity at my school to get to know some Christians my age. Most of my friends are a bit older than me....and married....and have children. :) I thought it would be cool to get to know people my own age. One night, as I was arriving, a friend came up and told me that we weren't going to be having any worship that evening. I honestly thought he was telling me that InterVarsity was canceled that evening. It turned out though, that all he meant was that we had a guest speaker coming in and he was going to talk for so long we didn't have time to sing.
This made me sad, that the act of hearing the Word was not considered worship. I wondered how we were able to worship without knowing the Word. If you remember from yesterday, we are to worship in spirit and in truth. Its not enough for us to get really psyched up because we like the music and the songs etc. If the emotion we are filled with is not gratitude, awe, humility, reverence, and love for our Lord THEN IT IS NOT WORSHIP!! Hearing the Word of God preached is an extremely important part of worship because without it we do not have the knowledge to worship. How can I thank God for His creation if I do not know He created it? How can I thank God for getting me to work on time if I do not know that He is sovereign?
As our knowledge of God and His works grows, so will our worship. As Jesus becomes more and more beautiful, our worship will become sweeter.
To wrap this series up, I would just like to say that all of the spiritual disciplines are very closely related. As you desire to grow in each one, the others will naturally grow as well.