WHAT ARE THE WAYS THAT YOU WORSHIP GOD?
PSALM 95: 1-7
JOHN 4: 7-24
MARCH 8, 2026
Life all too frequently offers challenges to us … unexpected challenges due to health realities or financial ups and downs or the impact of other people either directly or indirectly on our lives.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”
As I was growing up, I often heard reference to the one place on earth where you find humans worshiping God the most and it wasn’t in a church on Easter morning … it was in the foxholes of the battlefield where men were facing the reality that their lives might soon be gone.
Life and its challenges … perhaps it takes that dilemma of facing death squarely in its face that leads humans to last minute conversions or pleas with God. But I do believe we have the capacity to make this world better and to make our personal lives more peaceful when we worship the Almighty in good times and bad. I believe that we truly need to figure out our God connection before the unexpected happens and then suddenly we are at the judgment table outside the pearly gates without warning or perhaps having ignored all the information we have from God during our days here.
These last two weeks in particular seem to be overloaded with a variety of challenges that keep cropping up in front of this pastor and in a way, they coincide with today’s sermon title, which I wrote down several weeks ago.
WHAT ARE THE WAYS THAT YOU WORSHIP GOD?
Church, have you ever allowed your focus in life to be on discovering ways to worship and connect with God or do you slip into the habitual and mundane of everyday life because that is what you have always done? Have you allowed your mind, your heart, and your very soul to diminish God into the moments you attend church rather than embracing God as your daily essential? I believe worshiping God can be done in a variety of ways but even with those opportunities humans tend to march to the world’s drummer instead of choosing worship.
I do think that when we get overly busy, overly focused on the world, or specifically attempting to get everything we want either in the moment or in our plans for the future that it’s easy to push God into a corner or to give God a cloak of invisibility that blocks God from our focused minds. If we aren’t looking for God … if we aren’t focused on worshiping God, then God who created the universe becomes essentially invisible to us and worse not really the God that matters in our lives. We ignore God’s expectations because we act as if God is not really surrounding us or noticing us.
Today’s Psalm should be one of those Scripture passages that people of faith turn to regularly. I know … I know … you are probably thinking that most people are far too busy to open up a Bible much less read any Biblical passage in their busy days. It takes a lot of effort to click on a Bible APP on our phones and then to focus in … on the words that are in front of us much less read them. I was looking for a study that showed that is really challenging to open a Bible app and read some quotes from Jesus compared to the ease of clicking on Pokémon with the kids to capture a new character.
My goodness, I have been pushing the concept of reading the Gospels of Jesus Christ for some time now … and I wonder how many of you have highlighted Matthew 5:43 in pink or at least underlined it when you were reading the Sermon on the Mount during this journey of getting closer to God or before that did you smile when you read how God oversaw the moment between Jesus and John the Baptist and did you highlight Matthew 3:17?
Anyhow, I will get back to Matthew’s Gospel in a moment because Jesus said something in the fourth chapter of Matthew that has relevance to these moments.
I have often heard people criticizing churches that have kneelers. You know those long-convoluted cushion-covered tripping zones in front of pews in Catholic and Episcopal churches in particular. Perhaps some of you who have ventured into different churches and have been confounded by the moments when those in the know at those churches stood, sat, and ended up kneeling after pulling out the kneelers to their full length.
I happen to really like kneelers. I looked up to see if there is an official name for them but I pretty much found that in English they are called … KNEELERS … but in other languages they have taken on the French term for them … prie-DIEU, which means PRAY GOD.
Interesting … PRAY GOD … have a conversation with God … Paul writes, “Whatever you do, whether in speech,or action, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus and GIVE THANKS to GOD THE FATHER through Him.” And, “Pray without ceasing. Give thanks in every situation because this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not suppress the Spirit.” Prayer is the key unlocking the process of worship … PRAY GOD … pause … push the world aside … go back to the Twenty Third Psalm … get restored, which in itself is an act of worship.
Listen to some of the key words from today’s PSALM … again, I believe that these seven verses from Psalm 95 should be highlighted in the Bibles of every person of faith as a reminder … a reminder that if we are to get our lives together and sorted out to have a relationship with God or a faith-life where our Christianity means something more than a name then I do believe we need to honestly and fervently worship God.
“Come, let’s sing out loud to the LORD! Let’s raise a joyful shout to the rock of our salvation! Let’s come before him with thanks! Let’s shout songs of joy to him! The LORD is a great God, the great king over all other gods. Come, let’s worship and bow down! Let’s kneel before the LORD, our maker! He is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, the sheep in his hands. If only you would listen to his voice right now!”
If only … if only … are you willing to listen? Remember Matthew chapter 4? There are some Jesus words there … He said, “Change your hearts and lives! Here comes the kingdom of heaven!” My niece’s father-in-law, Jim Fallon died last week … unexpectedly. He was younger than me … a good guy! I enjoyed spending time with him at her wedding last year. We both had prostate cancer but we laughed and talked about getting together because he and his wife Devon lived in Cherry Hill but we didn’t … and I got the call … they are devastated … here comes the kingdom of heaven or … I am sure Jim wasn’t thinking about death two weeks ago. Darrin’s sister’s husband passed away in his sleep on Friday night … I have heard about his great faith as a talked with and held his wife Theresa and prayed with her. Always good to hear about someone’s faith but he is gone home to the Lord now … Jesus said, “CHANGE YOUR LIVES … here comes the kingdom of heaven!”
Our Scripture of the day said, Come, let’s worship and bow down! Let’s kneel before the LORD, our maker! He is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, the sheep in his hands. If only you would listen to his voice right now!”
Matthew said that Jesus frequently began to announce CHANGE YOUR LIVES … here comes the Kingdom of Heaven but before Matthew records that Matthew writes that Jesus fulfills the prophet Isaiah’s prophesy, “The people who lived in the dark have seen a great light, and a light has come upon them.” And, before that … Matthew again quotes Jesus … Jesus got in the face of Satan … yes, Scripture repeatedly refers to a power of evil … refers to Satan and Jesus declared to Satan, “GET AWAY FROM ME … it is written … YOU WILL WORSHIP THE LORD YOUR GOD and SERVE ONLY HIM!”
Ah, I said that there are many ways to worship God … to love God … to demonstrate that we belong to God and yes, it starts here in church … in worship … our Gospel lesson offers us insight as Jesus talks with the Samaritan woman at the well. “The time is coming when TRUE worshippers will worship in spirt and the truth. The Father looks for those who worship Him this way. God is spirit and it is necessary to worship God in spirit and in truth.”
So, this week when a homeless man named Mark called Trista … we worshiped God by going into action for this unknown human being. At the Wednesday Lenten Lunch at Woodbury Heights Presbyterian Church the women in my small study group when they heard about this homeless man with only the clothes on his back … they worshiped God by opening up their purses and giving me $70 to buy a backpack, some underwear and other clothes for him. Faith in action is worshiping God!
When more than 2000 clergy and United Methodist church members gathered together in Washington DC to affirm our adherence to God’s teaching in the Torah and Jesus lessons in Matthew related to caring for strangers in the land … that was worship!
When we sing together … when we pray together … when we love all of our neighbors together … when we stand up and act as peacemakers even when war mongers celebrate the deaths of innocents as if they are celebrating a touchdown or a home-run … actually and sadly that is the video being sent out by our leadership … touchdowns and home runs interspersed with bombing humans where people die as if we should clap our hands … peacemakers showcase where their hearts are by standing up for peace and thereby worshiping God.
And, so in this season of Lent … we know our choices. Good and evil … worshiping and connecting with God or dismissing God so that we can cheer on all that goes against Scripture but then again if we don’t read the Gospels … if we don’t pray and worship God then the god options we have are only of the world. Jesus faced up to Satan and declared, , “GET AWAY FROM ME … it is written … YOU WILL WORSHIP THE LORD YOUR GOD and SERVE ONLY HIM!”
Do you agree with Jesus Christ … are you going to highlight Psalm 95 in your Bibles? Are you going to use Lent this year to worship and bow down before God? Your choice … you can change your life but for all of us at some unknown time HEAVEN IS COMING! AMEN