Worship is not only what happens on Sunday morning—it’s the posture of our hearts in both joy and suffering. I was reminded of this one day as I was walking back and forth across the pool trying to get some steps in for the day. My mind was focused on my friend, Diane.
Diane had just been through a 14-hour surgery due to tongue cancer. The doctors had expected to remove only a portion of her tongue, but they ended up removing it completely. My heart ached for her. You see Diane was not just my friend, she was also my prayer partner, and she was a worshiper—a true minstrel before the Lord. For years, she sat with her guitar, pouring out songs of devotion. She reminded me of David whose heart was fully set on God. But now, she had lost her ability to sing. She would never again articulate words or even swallow food.
As I made another lap in the pool, I couldn’t hold back my emotions any longer. I looked up and cried out, “God… what about Diane?” Before I could even finish the sentence, His voice interrupted my thoughts. “That’s Father.”
Everything stopped. His words crashed through my emotions, my understanding, even the hidden places of insecurity I had long buried. He wasn’t rebuking me, nor was He angry. He was revealing who He is—Diane’s Father. MY FATHER! He was personally delivering the reality, that He had accepted me forever as His daughter. He was inviting me to always see Him as the One who loves me most. He was reminding me that I had been chosen and adopted into His royal family with all the benefits of Divine Royalty. He was giving me permission to call Him by His most intimate, loving name – Father!
Suddenly, my worry turned into trust. I no longer felt the weight of helplessness. Instead, I stepped into a new awareness of His sufficiency, His magnitude, and His reach—for Diane, for myself, and for every situation beyond my control. At the same time, I became aware that He knew every unredeemed place in my soul that I tried to hide from Him, and He still chose me to sit close to Him at His family table.
In that one second of revelatory Word layered with healing and acceptance, there was only one response that was appropriate – WORSHIP! Words of gratitude cascaded through my mind and across my lips as I rehearsed all the times I had experienced Him. Each memory became a stone on my altar of WORSHIP. His words that day became a Pearl of Remembrance, forever sealed in my heart.
In Romans 12:1 we read, “. . . Present yourself as a living sacrifice to God . . . this is your spiritual act of WORSHIP.” (NIV)
My simple processing of this unfathomable passage goes like this: God gave me the most extravagant present – His Divine Son. My only reasonable response to that is to give Him the present of my little life, wholly devoted to Him and overflowing in WORSHIP.
Just one more thing about my friend, Diane. She never stopped worshiping. She is still playing her guitar and hums her songs to God from a heart of thanksgiving. Though she once hid in silence, she now hosts a small group, speaks publicly, and even sings despite her loss of clear articulation. It's a transformative force that can turn our silence into songs of thanksgiving, our losses into opportunities for service, and our despair into hope. Diane’s story is a clear example that worship is not about what we can do—it’s about the heart we bring before Him.
So, as you busy yourself next Sunday morning and rush into church just in time to catch your breath as the music begins, take a moment and look into your “Alabaster Box” of treasures.
Pause. . .Reflect. . .Remember. . . where you were and what He did. Then realize that no one else can worship Him for that moment but YOU! That Pearl of Remembrance? It was a gift just for you from the Father. NOW, LET PURE WORSHIP FLOW!
John 4:23 But a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father is seeking such as these to worship Him. (NIV)
It is the knowledge of God made alive to us by His Spirit (interactive knowledge) that ignites our spirit to WORSHIP. In his book, Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard wrote, “To worship is to see God as worthy, to ascribe great worth to him. And as we increasingly see the greatness and goodness of God, we will respond with an ever-deeper, more authentic worship.”
This means that worship is not about an emotional moment – it is about revelation. The more we know Him, the deeper our worship becomes. Worship is always the response, never the starting point. Knowledge of God ignites worship, and experience of His presence sustains it.
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Melody Denham
Largo, Florida
CityLife Church
Tampa, Florida
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