Transforming Every Moment of Everyday Life into Worship

Psalm 103 is a psalm of gratitude, and it is one of my favorite psalms because it sort of covers so many things about why we need to be grateful to the Lord, why we need to give thanks to the Lord. And I am only going to read the first few verses, and then perhaps we will have an opportunity to touch on something else from the rest of the psalm. Psalm 103, verse 1, says—why don’t we read it together? The 1960 Reina-Valera Version; read it with me.

“…Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. He is the one who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies, who satisfies your mouth with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s…”

Glory to the Lord. How beautiful, right? We offer that to our Heavenly Father tonight in gratitude for all the things he does. The psalmist—especially David—is always calling his soul, his inner being, his spirit, to worship the Lord. When he is going through difficult situations, he always speaks to his soul. Actually, the soul is many things at once; it can be… the Bible does not use just one word. Sometimes the soul refers to the human realm of feelings, the will, intelligence, emotions, and all those kinds of things, but it can also be that higher faculty of the human being, that noble faculty within us, the spiritual part of us.

There is another passage I remember, one of the psalms where he says, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you troubled within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise him, my salvation and my God.”

It is as though there were something within him that he wants to encourage to do something noble, good, and important. And so he says, “O my soul”; once again he says, “O my soul, praise the LORD.” So one of the things we must always do is encourage ourselves to bless the Lord and give thanks to the Lord.

Sometimes that is not something that comes naturally. Sometimes we are downcast, facing problems in life; sometimes we are tired and not even lilies smell sweet to us. The loveliest choir and the most beautiful music can come along and do nothing for us… because we are so exhausted, tired, and troubled.

And at times like that, all you want to do is throw yourself onto a bed, pull the thickest blanket you can find over yourself, turn off the lights, close the windows, and have no one speak to you until this passes. And there are times when you have to say to your soul, “O my soul, praise the Lord.”

You know, sometimes worship and praise and the expression of gratitude are not things that come from the flesh; rather, they have to come from something within us—from the spirit. On another occasion, when the Lord Jesus Christ was contemplating the cross in Gethsemane, he spoke to the disciples and told them, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

So there is a part of us that is affected most by life’s circumstances and difficult situations; it is changeable—one day it wants to, and the next day it does not. And if we allow ourselves to be led by that part of our being, we would never worship the Lord; we would never praise him.

By the way, if someone would be so generous as to give me a little water, I would appreciate it. Thank you, Antonio. He should always be given a medal for service. He looks elegant too.

If we follow the flesh, brothers and sisters, the flesh comes and goes. There is something interesting here, because many times, when we are told to praise the Lord, we think something like, “You know what? I do not feel like praising the Lord. I am depressed; I am sad. If I praise God now or give him thanks, it would be hypocrisy.” That is because we think we have to feel something in order to do something noble.

We, the children of God, do not live according to our feelings. We, the children of God, live according to what we know is true and what must be done. And we do things because they must be done, because they are good, and because they are right; and we do not do certain things because they are not good, they are not right, and they are not of God. We do not live enslaved to feelings and the flesh.

The natural man—the person who has not been dealt with by God, the person who does not possess that spiritual stature that comes from continually engaging with the word of the Lord and meditating, as we do day after day, continually, on the things of the Spirit when we come here to the house of the Lord. Do you realize how exceptional this thing we do is—coming to the house of the Lord and being instructed morally, ethically, and spiritually time after time, on Sundays, on Wednesdays, in discipleship classes? Let me tell you that not all human beings do this.

This instruction that you and I receive as members of the body of Jesus Christ—moral instruction about how to behave, how to treat others, how to relate to God, eternity, the nature of heaven, hell, demons, and angels—this kind of material that we consume and process day after day is an incredible privilege. You are receiving teaching that you cannot receive at Harvard or at the great universities of this world, my brother. Do you realize that if the children of God truly take advantage of what we are given, we possess a moral, spiritual, and ethical education like very few people do?

And one of the things we learn as children of God is not to depend on the flesh, on our instincts, on the animalistic, carnal, earthly nature that, as the Apostle James says, we possess, but to connect with a higher dimension and faculty: the faculty of the spirit, the moral faculty, the ethical faculty. We must not act according to what the flesh dictates, but according to what the spirit tells us, according to what we know up here.

As the Lord Jesus Christ says, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” So we, the children of God, live by what God has declared, not by the appetites of the stomach or of the human, fleshly senses. Every day we must ask the Father, “Lord, help me to live according to humanity’s higher faculties.” And one of those is to worship and glorify and bless the name of the Lord.

So we cannot depend on what the flesh tells us. That is why I believe the psalmist says, “Bless the LORD, O my soul.” In other words, you must learn that blessing the Lord is necessary, good, beneficial, and inevitable. The Lord Jesus Christ says, “If men did not worship me, the stones would.” God must be worshiped. God must be exalted; he must be blessed. And if that were all I said tonight, it would already be enough for us.

While we were singing one of the songs—it was perhaps the second or third one, but it was clearly a song of worship and praise to the Lord—I was thinking that if some people came into the church knowing nothing about worship—and what is more, many who are in the church do not understand what this singing to the Lord is all about. Why do we come to church and worship and sing and say to the Lord, “You are good; blessed are you; thank you for your goodness”? We say so many things to the Father. Think about it: why must we do that? Unless you have been taught about its importance, why must the Lord be worshiped? Why do we do that? How strange.

You sing to a being you have never seen and say to him, “Thank you; you are almighty, holy, just, and good.” You sing those things, and unless you understand why they must be done and why they are important, you are like a parrot simply doing things because that is what Evangelicals do, and you are an Evangelical, so you have to do it.

But tonight I want you to understand why it is important to give thanks to the Lord, to bless his name, and to exalt and glorify him. It is because God is a creator. God is a creative, creating spirit. He has created everything that exists. He created us; he created the earth, the fish, the diversity of beings that populate the earth, the incredible abundance of planets and galaxies, the atom, the worm that crawls upon the ground, the elephant with its immense size, the eagle that flies through the air, the germ tucked beneath a little piece of leaf in a forest, under a rock where no one sees it. God created all of that.

And he sees it all, and he intimately knows the structure of every one of those things. He knows the tiniest details, and he can see the galaxies with all their beauty. Have you ever seen a picture of a galaxy taken from thousands and thousands of light-years away? How strange it is. They often look like animals; they have strange shapes. Those solitary things out there, lost in the vastness of the universe—stars, planets, meteors, black holes that only cosmologists and physicists understand—God created all of that.

He is the supremely creative spirit. Now listen to this. This is the first point: God’s very nature is to create, to make things. He creates like no other creator. Why does man create? Why does man have this appetite for creativity? Why does man like to make paintings and sculptures, write pieces of music, construct beautiful buildings, or make a scarf like the one my sister is wearing, with its different colors? Why do women adorn themselves with a necklace or a little earring? Where does this appetite for creativity within human beings come from? It comes from above, from the Father. God made us in his image and likeness.

So, just as God likes to create, we like to create. Do you know why we like to create? Because our Daddy, who made us and gave us his spiritual genetics—we are a reflection of him. Just as Daddy creates by nature, man also creates. He likes to create spacecraft that travel through space, submarines that descend into the depths of the sea, and laser beams that cut flesh with exquisite precision to perform an operation, to penetrate an eye.

And there is something every person who creates likes others to do: praise what he has created and praise his creativity. Do you know why artists create, architects create, scientists discover things, and astronauts risk their lives? Because of the glory that comes from it. Do you know why an astronaut goes to the moon? Because for the rest of his life he wants to be able to tell his grandchildren, “I was on the moon,” and one day to read a newspaper and say, “Ah, such-and-such astronaut was on the moon.” Why does a soldier, at a given moment, leap forward, place himself in front of the enemy, grab and throw 10 grenades, and save his friends from certain death? Because there is a medal. Why does the army give out medals? Because man likes receiving credit. That is natural for us.

What homemaker does not like it when she makes a good dish and people lick their fingers because it turned out so delicious, and they tell her, “Wow, that sancocho is so good!” Or, “Whatever this is, it is so good!” We like people to say good things about what we do. That is the nature of a creator. And from whom did we inherit that? From the Creator par excellence, the Father.

Understand this: what validates a being’s creativity is having witnesses who see it, admire it, and marvel at the creativity within the being who is doing it. When you listen to a pianist perform a piece with absolute mastery, that pianist, as he plays, derives a certain joy and pleasure from knowing that people are watching him and saying, “Wow, what tremendous skill he has.”

People may not say it at that moment, but as he plays, he feels their eyes caressing his body and saying, “How beautiful!” And he receives a little from each person, and then they applaud him or rise to their feet because he has done something extraordinary. And that is not wrong; it depends… Now, the good thing is when the pianist who does that says, “Lord, this comes from you, and I give the ultimate credit to you. How wonderful that I possess it; you have given me this gift. How wonderful. But ultimately this gift comes from you; it is a gift, a present.”

It does not matter if it passes through you, stays there for a little while and caresses you, and then goes straight on to the Father. What is wrong is when men grab hold of it and, like people who smoke a cigarette and swallow the smoke, keep it instead of blowing it out and directing it to the Lord. That is the problem. Most men keep the glory for themselves. But how beautiful it is when it touches you, tickles you a little, and then continues on to the Father.

What I mean, brothers and sisters, is this: all of us have that creative instinct within us, and we like people to tell us, “You have done well; there is something special within you.” That comes to us… that is why I understand why God likes to be praised. Now, praising God is not like praising a human artist. Praising God is the sum of that act of praising here and saying, “How good! How wonderful!” When it is applied to God, it is multiplied by a thousand, and by a thousand, and by a thousand, and then it attains its full meaning when applied to the Father. Here it is simply a small sample of what we do fully and absolutely toward the Creator par excellence, who is God.

So when we go back down to the church, when we are saying to the Lord, “Then sings my soul, how great Thou art,” when you say that, you are putting that feeling into words: “You are great; you are beautiful; you are immeasurable. There are no words capable of encompassing what you are.” And the Creator par excellence, who has taught us to delight in our own tiny creations, receives that.

And he delights in it, because that is what a creator does. That is what an artist does. But when God does it, there is not an iota of carnal pride or anything like that; it is simply a mystery of creation that God should be praised by his creatures and that they should tell him—and he likes that. The fact is that we... everything that exists does so because God sees it and because God gives it meaning. So when we praise the Lord, thank him for everything he does, and bless him, we are doing that for which everything that exists was created. And of all the creatures God has made, we are the creatures who can worship him with almost the same lucidity with which he would speak about himself, because there is no other creature—a lion, perhaps, when it roars, is worshiping the Lord; we do not know—but imagine the richness when a man or woman worships with all their mental, emotional, and spiritual complexity. When they worship God, that worship has a value that the worship or praise of no other creature has.

And that is why he created us. The ultimate reason you and I exist is to worship the Lord and glorify him. So I believe that the most powerful, most potent, most meaningful act any human being can perform in their entire life is to worship the Lord. What makes us eminently human and valuable is our ability to worship the Lord. Everything else is secondary. That is why even the most exalted scientist, the most highly developed intellectual, if he does not acknowledge God and does not praise him, worship him, serve him, and give him the place he deserves, is like a brute, a beast of the field. For all his intellectual greatness... that intellectual greatness does not rise above the ceiling.

Now, when we worship the Lord, we transcend time and space; we reach eternity, the absolute, the realm of the spirit, and our worship travels the greatest distances to reach the throne of God. And then we fulfill our true destiny of being the worshipers we were created to be. So when you worship the Lord, you are entering into precisely that for which God created you: for his glory and honor and to worship him.

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims the work of his hands. Everything that exists glorifies the Lord in one way or another, and when God looks at it—when he looks at the little worm pushing its little mouth among the grains of soil and burrowing deep down—he laughs and delights in it. There is something about the insignificant worm, which we look at with disgust, that pleases the Lord when he sees it from his throne, from his eternity, because he invented it to do that. And the worm has its place, its reason for being, and its function, believe it or not. Even mosquitoes—one wonders what they are for. My God, please! But I believe there is something about the mosquito that would justify it if we could see it as God sees it.

Now, we [inaudible] perhaps God, in his sense of humor, gave us mosquitoes to keep us busy on a boring night in a field in Santo Domingo, so that we would not fall asleep. Everything has meaning, and everything exists to glorify and praise the name of the Lord. That is why, when we come to the house of the Lord, sing a hymn, sing a chorus, raise our hands, and thank the Lord, remember this: we are doing what the angels do, what the 24 elders do when they bow down and lay their crowns at his feet. Are there 24 or 12? If there are 12, there ought to be 24. I think there are 24. Twelve is perfect, but you need something like double perfection.

When the 24 elders—those incredible beings whom we do not know exactly, whether they are human, a special creation of God, or angels; we do not know—when those 24 elders, with their crowns of authority, lay them at the feet of the Almighty, everything exists for that. And in eternity every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. The nature of redeemed eternity is the ability to worship the Lord in different ways. Everything humanity does in all its creativity throughout eternity will be for the purpose of worshiping and glorifying the name of the Lord.

There no one will keep the glory; we will always cast it back to the Lord and give it to him. And while we are here on earth, remember this well: every Sunday when you come to the house of the Lord, when you sing a hymn, when you say something to the Father, remember clearly why you do it—because that is what you were created for.

And when a congregation like ours delights in worship, I thank the Lord because, Sunday after Sunday, our appetite for worship grows. We delight in it, and the only reason I sometimes stop the worship is that, as a pastor, I know there are many other things that also need to be done. Like a homemaker, I have many other things to do: there is time for the Word and worship; the tithes and offerings have to be collected, definitely; announcements have to be made; we have to lay our hands on the little heads of the babies when we present them. There are many things that need to be done, but I would love for us simply to remain worshiping the Lord, praising him, raising our hands, glorifying him, praying to him. But then one thinks about the visitors, the little old lady for whom the praise is too loud, the newcomer who has little patience for the length of the service, or whatever it may be. As a pastor, your antennae are in 20,000 places, and you have to do a little of everything. And that too is worshiping the Lord.

When many people get upset—“Oh, the pastor cut the worship short; we should have continued because we had already reached the throne of grace,” and who knows what else—look, brother, I believe God delights in everything we do. Even the announcements worship and glorify the Father, because the Father hears them and says, “Wow, how busy my people are doing good things for me.” God is glorified in everything: the child receiving the teacher’s instruction; the usher who is attentive so that everything will be in order and who shows love by leading someone to a seat. He takes all that in and is glorified in all of it.

Brother Roberto Naranjo takes his measuring tape and makes sure that all the chairs are properly aligned, and the Lord is being glorified through that. The sister or brother who brings a dish of food for the lunches, and those who arrange and prepare it—the Lord is glorified. Do you think glorifying the Lord means only singing? God is glorified by all things. Again, the worm worships and glorifies the Lord because it is one of his creations. When the lion roars in the jungle, when the tiger pounces on a deer or an antelope and tears it apart, even in something so strange and terrible, it is glorifying God, because God placed that instinct in it.

And even when an animal decomposes in the jungle, returns to the earth, and serves as fertilizer so that plants and everything else can grow, that process glorifies the Lord. Likewise, when we gather together, everything we do glorifies the Lord: the thoughts that are there while we sit; our silent, wordless confession that no one hears; our humility before God; the arm we put around someone because God gave us a word of comfort that we want to share with him or her; the coin or check we place in the offering basket; the handshake we give the visitor; when we get up from our seat so someone else can sit in it—all of that is glorifying the Lord. It is not only singing.

Singing is good and precious, and we should do it, but understand, brothers and sisters, that everything we do in that sacred moment of preparing the atmosphere and worshiping the Lord—God is receiving all of it; it is part of worship. The Lord tells me that we must broaden our understanding of worship. Do not think that when the singing stops, the praise is over. The praise continues. And afterward, when you go home and continue there in your own devotion, or when you lie down and your last word is for the Lord, when you get up to do the work of a loving father, a husband, or a member of some city team that keeps the city running, you are praising the Lord.

If you understand what you are doing and surrender it to him, saying, “Father, this is my offering to you,” you can transform your working life into worship; you can transform your life of thought into worship and prayer and an expression of love for the Lord. You can—everything you do can become a symphony of praise. Your very life can be worship to the Lord if at every moment you are conscious that you exist, that you are who you are, and that you have what you have because everything comes from God, and you must return it to him in praise.

And you are a continuous vibration. The cells moving inside your body say, “O my soul, glorify and praise the Lord.” So I encourage you. I was going to speak about something else, but I believe we already have more than enough right there. Why do we praise? And what does it mean to worship the Lord? And what understanding do I have of the complexity and all-encompassing nature of worship, and of the fact that worshiping is the most important thing I can do, that a church can do, that a community can do, that humanity can do, because that is what we were created for? And the very nature of God as Creator, as the infinite artist, is to delight in every one of his creations.

When you write a poem, even if no one is ever going to read it, do you not delight in reading it again? And you say, “Wow, look how well it turned out!” Isn’t that right? Some of you are smiling because you know what I am talking about. And that is what happens when God looks upon his creation and sees his creatures functioning as he designed them. He never grows tired of examining us and saying, “I created this.” And then, when that creation becomes conscious of this and magnifies that act of worship by adding reflection and awareness to it, it is like one mirror facing another, multiplying infinitely.

When we consciously worship the Lord, without realizing it, we are now doing it in a multiplied way. That is why, when we come to the house of God, it has an incredible capacity: when a people unites, each person aware that worshiping the Lord is good, then it is infinitely multiplied—mirror after mirror after mirror, reflecting one another infinitely, each of us lifting up to the Lord a song of praise and worship.

That is why we come tonight and say, “Father, thank you. Everything we have comes from you.” How beautiful is what the psalmist says: “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and may all my being—mind, soul, body, heart, spirit, will, memory—bless his holy name. Bless the LORD, O my soul.”

And forget none of his benefits. Tonight we do not want to forget a single one of the benefits he has given us, a single one of the rewards he has given us, or a single one of the ways he has dealt with us. Everything God does in our lives is good and deserves to be pointed out, praised, and acknowledged. My brother, my sister, may the purpose of being a worshiper, a person of praise, be renewed in your heart tonight. May your life always be a continuous round of applause for the Father, the Creator par excellence, for all the good things he does in your life. Worship him with an awareness that, by worshiping, you are entering the very axis, the very center of your nature and of the purpose for which you were created.

There is nothing you can do that has more meaning, more importance, or more sublimity than worshiping the Lord, thanking him, acknowledging who he is, and proclaiming his attributes. May the Lord bless us. Tomorrow, may this dynamic of worship and praise continue.

That psalm was made into a chorus that I do not know whether John knows. It says, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and...” Perhaps you can find it. We are going to sing that psalm, and we will pick it up when we can.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and may my being bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget none of his benefits. He is the one who forgives your iniquities, who heals all your ailments, who rescues your life from the pit, and who crowns you with mercy. Yes, bless the Lord, O my soul, and may my being bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget none of his benefits. He is the one who forgives your iniquities, who heals all your ailments, who rescues your life from the pit, and who crowns you with mercy. Yes, bless the Lord, O my soul, and may my being bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and may my being bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget none of his benefits. He is the one who forgives your iniquities, who heals all your ailments, who rescues your life from the pit, and who crowns you with mercy. Yes.

Thank you, Lord. We worship you. These people worship you, Father, tonight. We pay tribute to you, Lord. We exalt your name and acknowledge your greatness, Lord, your many favors, your benefits, your mercy. Thank you for pulling us out of the pit when we get ourselves into trouble; you pull us out.

Thank you for forgiving all our iniquities. Thank you because you are our healer of all ailments, from a headache to cancer, Lord. You heal all our ailments so that we are renewed like the eagle, Lord. Thank you for all your benefits and your goodness.

Glorify yourself, Lord, in our lives. Glorify yourself in this congregation, Father. May we never forget how important it is to praise you. May our hearts always be filled, Father, with an insatiable appetite for worship, and may we always walk humbly before you.

Thank you for your mercy. As a father has compassion on his children, so you have compassion on us. As far as the east is from the west, so you have removed all our transgressions from us, Father. How wonderful—you did not hold on to them; you cast them far away, Lord. Thank you for your love tonight. We bless you; we glorify you.

Bless your people; pour out your Spirit upon them. And Father, tonight give us peaceful sleep. Tomorrow, help us to remain at peace, whatever our condition or situation may be. Whether we are alone or surrounded by many people, you never leave us; you are always with us; you love us. We love you. Thank you because you have an exceptional destiny for each one of us. You have not forgotten us; you have good things for your children. We love you; we bless you.

Thank you, Father. We are so grateful to you, Lord, for all your mercies, your grace, and your incomparable, unending, limitless love. Father, you are so gracious to us, and tonight we are so grateful to you. Receive our prayers; receive our worship.

Be glorified, Lord, in our lives. We love you. We bless you. Thank you, Lord. In Jesus’ name, God’s people say: Amen. I bless you, my brothers and sisters. May the grace of the Lord be with you.