Journey to the Cross

Pause

Take a moment to think about how you are expressing your love and praise to God. What difference does your being a child of God make in the way you live your life together with God and others?

Listen

Do not use the Lord your God’s name as if it were of no significance; the Lord won’t forgive anyone who uses his name that way.

Remember the Sabbath day and treat it as holy. Six days you may work and do all your tasks, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. Do not do any work on it—not you, your sons or daughters, your male or female servants, your animals, or the immigrant who is living with you. Because the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything that is in them in six days, but rested on the seventh day. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Exodus 20:7-11

Think

When God helped Moses lead the newly released Hebrew people into the wilderness, it was to worship (see Exodus 7:16). In today’s passage, God helps the people understand that worship is the foundation of God’s being with them; worship was the proper response to a Holy God, who is set apart by complete perfection, amazing, and awesome. To show their belief in God and respond to God’s saving acts and continuing power, the people would gather for worship, honoring the living God’s name with prayers, singing, and postures of praise.

We are still called to worship. Why do you worship? Have you decided for yourself that God is worthy of your worship? When you gather for worship with others, can you focus on giving your true praise to the living God who saves? Will you come together with God, together with others, in praise of the one true living God who still acts to save us now and forever?

David Haun

Pray

Holy God, you are worthy to be worshiped no matter where I find myself; Your promises to be my God and to save me are alive in history and today. I ask you in the Spirit to write a new song of praise in my heart, a song that will last and sing me through to a renewed sense of worship. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.

Go

Go, led by the Holy Spirit, making way for God to be first with you always and your neighbor to be second, answering God’s saving love with your life, meeting the miracle of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ with the gift of your honor-filled worship, both day and night, wherever you are, forever. Amen.