HOOD'S PERSPECTIVE

The worship that pleases God; He wants all of you, He is not interested in half hearted commitment, partial obedience or the leftovers of your time and money. Where you worship is not as important as why you worship and how much you offer yourself to God when you worship. The bible says, "let us be grateful and worship God in a way that will please him." The kind of worship that pleases Him has four attributes: He is pleased when your worship is accurate . It must be based on the truth of the scripture and not our opinions about God. The bible says that "True worshippers will worship the father in spirit and truth, for they're the kind of worshippers the father seeks." He is pleased when your worship is authentic . When Jesus said you must "Worship in Spirit", He meant your spirit not the Holy Spirit. God designed your spirit to communicate with him. True Worship is your spirit responding to God's spirit.  Worship must be genuine and heartfelt,

You're so close to God as you choose to be. Your friendship with God won't happen by mistake, it takes desire, time and energy. If you want an intimate, deeper connection with God, then you must work towards developing it.  An intimate relationship with God requires that you are totally honest with him about your faults and feelings. He doesn't require you to be perfect but He requires honesty, none of God's friends in the Bible was perfect. If perfection was a requirement, we would never be his friends. A deeper relationship with God also requires total obedience in him through faith. Trusting and doing what God says, even when you don't understand it, will deepen your relationship with him. Jesus said, "you're my friend if you do what I command ".  Friends care about what's important to the other person, the same applies to your relationship with God. You must choose to value what he values, the more you do that, the deeper your relationship w

God wants to be your friend. Adam and Eve enjoyed an intimate friendship with God, unhindered by fear or guilt and was not dependent on religion, rituals or ceremonies.  We were made to live in God's continual presence, but that relationship was lost after the fall of man. Only a few people like Moses, David,Job, Noah, Enock, had the privilege of friendship with God at that time in the old testament. Jesus changed everything when he paid for our sins on the cross. We dont need countless hours preparing to meet God, we can now individually approach God anytime.  Knowing and loving God is our greatest privilege and being known and loved is God's greatest pleasure. Becoming God's best friend requires constant conversation with him. You must include Him in every activity, conversation, problem and thought through each day. Another way to establish a friendship with God is by thinking about his word all day. The Bible repeatedly argues us to meditate on who God is, what he

The heart of worship is surrender. Its the natural response to God's amazing love and mercy.  We give our self to him not out of fear or duty but in love, "because he first loved us". "So then, my friends, because of God's great mercy to us...offer your selves as a living sacrifice to God, dedicated to his service and pleasing to him. This is the true worship that you should offer".   In the scripture above, apostle Paul encourages us to fully surrender our lives to God in worship. C.S Lewis said "The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become- because made us".  Obedience to God's will and total trust in Him are aspects of living a fully surrendered life. The supreme example of self surrender is Jesus. The night before his crucifixion, he totally surrendered himself to God's plan. Jesus didn't pray, " God, if you're able to take way this pain, please do so" . Instead he prayed, " God, if its