The full purpose of our lives is found in praising God
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As Christians we believe the full purpose of our lives is to praise God. As we do so we begin to recognize more and more that everything comes from God and to feel even more thankful and full of praise.
Worship helps to recognize who God really is, it opens our hearts to what is good. Itcatches us up into the life of heaven. It is something we are called to every day of our lives and is fulfilled, among other ways, when we say the Lord’s Prayer.
The fundamental business of life is worship. At the root of all your being, your intellectual studies, the games you play, whatever it is, the impulse to do them well is and ought to be understood as being an impulse towards God, the source of all that is excellent. All life ought to be worship; and we know quite well there is no chance it will be worship unless we have times when we have worship and nothing else.
Archbishop William Temple (1881–1944)
The Christian view of humankind is that human beings were created to know God and live in a right relationship with God of love and fellowship. The true perspective and purpose in our lives is found in the praise and appreciation of God and in our relationship with God.
Because of God’s grace in Jesus Christ we are able to call God ‘Father’; we are drawn into a relationship with our brothers and sisters in Christ. We align ourselves with God’s will for a better world. We begin to see that everything we have comes from God. We place ourselves daily within his love, care and protection.
The worship and praise of God gives us scale and orientation and direction for the whole of the rest of our lives. Praise and appreciation opens out our words and then our hearts and minds – and especially the praise and worship of God.
What makes gathering with other Christians important to you?
For Christians, offering praise to God is a daily calling. We are called to worship not only with our lips but in our lives.
That calling is sustained as we say our prayers, and especially the Lord’s Prayer. However, our daily worship also needs to be sustained by gathering with God’s people in praise and worship on Sundays and on other days of the week.
The Church gathers primarily for worship, to celebrate all that God is and all that God has done, to be drawn into the life of the Trinity: the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We offer God songs and words of praise in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
We attend to God’s words in Scripture. We gather around the table of the Lord in the Holy Communion. We offer prayers for our own needs and the needs of the world. When we do this we join our prayers – thin and weak as they often are – with the great hymn of praise of the Church in both earth and heaven, in time and in eternity:
For the kingdom, the power,
and the glory are yours
now and for ever.
Amen.
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Psalm 100.1-3
O be joyful in the Lord, all the earth;
serve the Lord with gladness
and come before his presence with a song.
Know that the Lord is God;
it is he that has made us and we are his;
we are his people and the sheep of his pasture.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and bless his name.
- Scripture
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Another term for the Christian Bible
- Worship
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Offering praise to God.
- Communion
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a) the sacramental sharing of bread and wine by the faithful, following the example given in the Last Supper of Christ with his disciples; b) a service in which Holy Communion is received.
Living out our faith
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The Lord's Prayer
The Lord’s Prayer is the prayer Jesus taught his followers to pray
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