SIX WAYS WORSHIPING GOD ON SUNDAY SHOULD TRANSFORM THE WAY WE LIVE THE REST OF THE WEEK (Pt. 3)

So how are we doing in these areas? Is the time we spend worshiping God on Sundays making us more humble? Is it making us more secure?

Undoubtedly these things will take time to manifest themselves in our lives, and we'll never reach a point where we are perfectly humble, or perfectly secure, but these should be practical responses to the time we spend worshiping together.

Let's continue reading from Bob Kauflin's "Worship Matters..." for the third way our lives should be transformed by worshiping together:

3) Worshiping God should make us grateful

There's a reason God commands us to "Enter his gates with thansgiving, and his courts with praise!" (Psalm 100:4). "For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever" (Psalm 100:5). And he has been unspeakably kind to us.

When people ask my friend C.J. Mahaney how he's doing, he typically brings God's kindness to mind by responding, "Better than I deserve." Someone might think he's just received an unexpected gift or he's an optimistic guy. It's much deeper than that. He's reminding himself of the gospel.

I've adopted that response at times and have received negative reactions. Some people thought I suffer from low self-esteem. I told them I have no problem thinking highly of myself, too highly in fact.

The truth is we're all doing much better than we deserve. Because of our sin, we all deserve hell.

Yet many times people walk into our meetings unfulfilled, unsatisfied, and ungrateful. They've been thinking about others who are richer, more beautiful, more well known, stronger, more talented, or more godly.

Worshiping God rightly should open our eyes to God's amazing grace. We remember how in Christ Jesus we are redeemed and reconciled to our Father and therefore are enabled to abound in gratefulness and thanksgiving. Our greatest need has been taken care of at the cross.

For that reason, we're able to abound in gratefulness and thanksgiving. In fact, songs of gratefulness are one way Christianity is distinct from other faiths, as one author reminds us:

The great faiths of the Buddhists and the Mohammedan give no place either to the need for the grace reconciliation. The clearest proof of this is the simplest. It lies in the hymns of Christian worship. A Buddhist temple never resounds with a cry of praise. Mohammedan worshipers never sing. Their prayers are, at the highest, prayers of submission and of request. They seldom reach the gladder note of thanksgiving. They are never jubilant with the songs of the forgiven.

When we gaze on the cross of Christ and truly recognize that we should be hanging there instead, what response can there be but overflowing gratefulness?