Prefer a podcast? Click here to listen to the podcast version of this message.
Transcript:
Hello, welcome to Walking in Step with God. I am Steve McDonald. Today, as we continue our series on “The Power of Worship”, we explore the topic “Worship with Community”. There are so many ways to worship and show our love and gratitude to God. Many of those ways can be done alone, but there are also many ways we can worship with others.
Gathering for worship with others can unlock a unique power that eludes us when we worship alone. For example, in another message of this series, we discussed worship with the act of praise. Often, praise is done among others as many voices come together as one to sing praise to God.
Today, we are going to discuss 3 ways that we can worship with the community. Let’s discover how we can worship God together in unity.
Before we dive in, let’s take a quick break. I will be right back.
Welcome back. Let’s dive right into discussing 3 ways to worship with others in our community.
#1 Worship through prayer
Prayer can and does change lives. Praying with others can be a powerful way to lift up a request from many before God as one. It can also be a time for bringing many voices together to show gratitude for God. God enjoys our individual prayers, but when we gather together in prayer—two or more—the divine presence shows up in fresh and exhilarating ways.
Prayer with others can be as simple as your offering to pray with someone to have strength during a difficult time. It can be in a group setting, where many people pray as one in thanks for God’s abundance. In both of these scenarios, we lift up our hearts, minds, and spirits before God in the community to express our thanks and gratitude or bring a petition before Him.
Prayer in a community can be a powerful way to provide support for everyone involved. Perhaps, there are many in a group setting who would not know what to pray, but an individual leading a group in prayer can align the hearts and minds of everyone to lift up a unified voice before God.
#2 Worship through fellowship
Fellowship is the act of meeting and discussing a walk of faith with others. The context can vary. There can be a group of individuals providing support for one another. It can be two individuals talking about their journey in faith. Fellowship may and often does even include prayer.
When we come together in fellowship, we create a space for God to touch our hearts and minds in a way that may influence the direction of the conversation and even the words that are spoken.
God uses us to provide counsel and guidance to others in need. The forum of fellowship is a popular and powerful mechanism to share ideas, share testimony and provide support for one another in a safe space with other like-minded individuals.
If you are looking to energize your walk with God, be sure to find a way to fellowship with other believers. This can be through your place of worship in a group or even one-on-one discussions with friends, family, and loved ones.
#3 Worship through giving
Another powerful way to worship is through giving. There are many ways to give. Giving of our time. Giving of our resources. Giving of our acts of service. All of these ways can allow us to worship God, especially when we ask Him to use us as He sees fit to help others.
When we surrender our time, resources, or skill sets to God, He can send us into the world on assignment to interact with others in need. Your assignment may involve giving to someone you know very well, or even a stranger you will only meet once and never meet again.
True giving is giving without regret, hesitation, or disappointment. God delights in a ‘cheerful’ giver. One who looks forward to the opportunity to give, representing God’s hand in helping someone or even many others in need.
If you have a desire to give and worship God by giving, I invite you to ask God to use you as He sees fit to help others in need. You notice I added ‘As He sees fit’. I say this because I want to invite you to not try to control the way God will use you. God knows every single thing about you: what you can and cannot offer, what resources you do and do not have, and perhaps most importantly what you are capable of doing to benefit the life of another.
So, ask Him to use you as He sees fit so you can give in a way that maximizes your ability to impact someone’s life. Take it from me, being sent on assignment from God is one of the most rewarding and gratifying experiences of our faith.
Wrap Up
In today’s message, we discussed 3 ways to worship with our community. We explored how worship through prayer with others is a powerful way to bring a petition before God or express gratitude and thanks before God in agreement as one.
We discussed the impact of fellowship with others. Discussing our walk with God and living day to day in our faith with others is a great way to support each other through good times and challenging times. We learned that fellowship with others is also a great way for God to use us to share wisdom or counsel with others.
Lastly, we explored how we can worship through giving. Similar to the way that God can use us to share words of wisdom with others in fellowship, God can also use us to give to someone in need. If we ask God to use us as He sees fit (in other words, without self-induced restrictions), we will find ourselves on assignment, dispatched from God to intervene in someone’s circumstances on God’s behalf. We learned that giving could be time, resources, or even our skill set. The most important thing to know is that only God knows our full potential to give, so let us worship Him by offering ourselves to give to others in need.
Worship with others in our communities is a powerful way to walk with God in unity with others. Celebrating God, thanking God, and praising God together. Look for ways to worship God with your community today.
Are you interested in discovering more about the guidance offered in this message? Learn more in the companion article Going Deeper with the Word: Worship with Community
