A Happy Healthy Church: Devotions From Time of Grace MinistrySample

WORSHIP: GO PUBLIC

You've heard of secret relationships, right? When a married man is having an affair, the woman he is seeing on the side is his "mistress." Nobody can know because it's a secret. He can never take her anywhere, never say anything publicly about her, never mention her name in his regular world.

I wonder if sometimes God feels like a mistress. People want a personal relationship with him, but they're not proud of him in public. Nobody else knows they're Christians.

The Bible encourages us to be proud of our God and to go public with it. The church is good for public worship, by which I mean acknowledging your love for the Lord, your appreciation for the Lord, your gratitude to the Lord with an audience! When you worship and praise God in front of your friends, they know how you feel, and they also see that you are proud enough of your God to claim him.

Here are a few words of inspiration from Psalm 96:7,8: "Ascribe to the LORD, O families of nations, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength. Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; bring an offering and come into his courts."

In other words, get off your chair. Get out of your living room. Get out on the street. Go public and show the world that you are proud of your God and grateful to him for what he's done for you.