Worship and God's Word

Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible with 176 verses. It is the longest prayer in the Bible with all but the first three verses addressed directly to God.

Psalm 119 is a prayer to God of His word. It is has twenty-two, eight-verse sections corresponding to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. I encourage you to take one of those eight-verse sections a day and make it your prayer. Then take one verse of that section during your quiet time and memorize it so that you can meditate on it throughout the day.

One of the things that you will learn with this exercise is that this long prayer has relatively few requests. You will also learn that the majority of those requests ask for instruction, “…teach me your statutes…teach me your precepts.” This request is repeated over and over in this prayer.

Another thing you quickly notice is that the majority of the requests to learn from God’s word are tied to praising God. Here are a few examples:

“I will praise you with an upright heart, when I learn your righteous rules.” 119:7. “Blessed are you, O LORD; teach me your statutes.”  119:12. “The earth, O LORD, is full of your steadfast love; teach me your statutes.” 119:64.

From this you learn that worshiping the Father puts you on an eternal learning curve from His word. The reason is because God’s word reveals who God is and worship is a faithful and sacrificial response to God as He reveals Himself in Christ from His word. The more you worship Him in spirit and truth, the more you learn of Him, and the more you know Him. This leads to more and more worship of Him. Hallelujah!

Psalm 119 will teach you to pray, if you desire to learn to pray, by teaching you to worship the Father by asking Him to give you understanding and insight into His word. This is what it means to worship the Father in spirit and truth.

Tomorrow, we will see the connection of worship with wisdom.