How to Worship...at Church

We need to learn to worship God in every area of our lives: at home, at work, in our cars... everywhere. In this article, we're going to let Psalm 95 give us some ideas for learning to better worship God at church. Believe it or not, worship does not happen automatically the moment you walk through the doors of the church each week! There are some choices that you can make that will bring a real difference to your focus on God during worship. As often as we attend services where we are supposed to worship, we spend very little time talking about HOW to worship. Most of us spend more time training on how to work at our computer than how to worship our creator!

For worship to stay both restful and revitalizing we must:

Get the BIG picture right
Do the LITTLE things right

Here are 4 ideas from Psalm 95

HOW TO START

"Let us come before him with thanksgiving..." Psalm 95:2 (NIV)

The big idea:

Start your worship like you start your meals: BY OFFERING THANKS

Worship has a starting line... and if you're ever going to get out of the blocks you must begin with an attitude of thanksgiving. Let's take this visual of the starting line of a race a little further. Suppose the gun goes off, and you're still sitting at the starting line - caught up in grumbling about the details. "My shoes hurt... the track doesn't look right... my shorts are the wrong color..." You never even get into the race!

I'm not saying you should fake it and say everything in your life is perfect... because it isn't. But if you want to bring the truth about God's greatness to both the good and the bad in your life... start with thanksgiving. When you put thanks at the top of the list, it tends to put everything else in the right order.

The little things:

1. Tell someone something you're thankful for.

What are you thankful for? What person, what circumstance, what blessing, what event, what growth, what characteristic of God are you thankful for?
Don't just think it... say it!

2. Reduce your GPH and increase your TPH.

GPH is "Gripes Per Hour... TPH is "Thanks Per Hour

3. Thanksgiving Day once a week: in your QUIET TIME

Why have Thanksgiving just once a year? You might even start a "thanksgiving journal" that you add to each week! 

Culled from: Experiencing Worship - By Tom Holladay