Worship isn’t just singing on Sunday—it’s a heart attitude that lifts us out of stagnation by redirecting our focus upward. When life feels like an endless loop, worship reminds us who’s in control. But how do we cultivate this posture? It boils down to three key steps: humility, gratitude, and clarity.
STEP ONE: EMBRACE HUMILITY
A posture of worship starts with a humble spirit, recognizing our place before an almighty God. Consider Mary, chosen to carry the Savior as an unmarried teenager in a judgmental society. Facing shame and uncertainty, she responded not with complaint, but with exaltation:
“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.” (Luke 1:46-48)
Mary’s humility flowed from understanding that every blessing is an unearned gift from God. As James 4:10 reminds us, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” Humility isn’t self-deprecation; it’s acknowledging that we deserve nothing, yet God lavishes us with everything—life, family, faith, even the air we breathe.
When you’re stuck, humility shifts your perspective from “Why me?” to “Thank you, Lord, for what You’ve already done.” It lightens the load of entitlement and opens the door to joy, even in tough seasons.
STEP TWO: EXPRESS GRATITUDE
The next step is gratitude. Two things really stand out about the kind of gratitude God wants from us. First, biblical gratitude is almost exclusively about God. I can’t identify more than one or two instances in the Bible that call people to be thankful toward other people. Instead, the Bible urges believers to be grateful primarily (if not exclusively) to God.
Second, the Bible says to be thankful in all circumstances (1 Thess. 5:18). Gratitude isn’t just being thankful to God when good things happen, but giving thanks to God, no matter what. Does God really expect us to be thankful when things don’t go our way? Or when we’re stuck on the West Loop at 5:30 in the afternoon? Or when we’re still single and Valentine’s Day is twelve days away?
Absolutely, yes.
Psalm 100 says, “Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise.” This psalm was written at least eight hundred years before the birth of Jesus, during the Iron Age, an especially tumultuous time in Middle Eastern history that was marked by war, violence, and disease. Almost half of all babies born didn’t live to see their fifth birthday. Almost a quarter of pregnant women didn’t survive childbirth. Poverty was everywhere, and food was scarce.
Even in those uncomfortable circumstances, God called His people to enter His gates with thanksgiving. True thanks-giving is impervious to one’s circumstances, but all too often, my gratitude looks more like thanks-feeling, because I typically choose to be thankful based on how I feel about my circumstances.
Researchers have studied the effects of gratitude on human life for years, and it won’t surprise you to learn that being thankful is good for your health. What surprised me, though, was what happened when they began to study the health benefits of giving thanks, over just feeling thankful. People who say they feel grateful aren’t necessarily any healthier than those who don’t. But people who express their thanks by writing cards, making calls, and sending gifts are healthier and happier than people who feel thankful but do nothing about it. If you just feel thankful without ever expressing it, the person you’re thankful for will never know it, and they will perceive your lack of expression as a lack of gratitude. Gratitude must be expressed in order to make a difference.
And therein lies the secret. If gratitude is merely a feeling to you, you will find it a little harder each day to feel thankful for what you have and eventually you’ll begin to feel anxious about what you don’t have. As long as gratitude is just a feeling, you’ll be condemned to always feel entitled to something more.
Gratitude isn’t about platitudes: it’s a spiritual rebellion against the sense of entitlement that tells us that what we have isn’t enough. It’s about crying tears of joy for everything God has already given you. Gratitude is worship in the trenches of everyday life.
STEP THREE: SEEK CLARITY
The third step toward a posture of worship is clarity. In order to properly express gratitude, you need to be clear about who you’re thanking. Kids on Christmas morning are usually grateful for their gifts, but if they’ve been raised to believe a fat man in a red suit delivered them, they’ll thank Santa instead of the true source of their presents: their broke, exhausted parents (and ultimately God, of course).
In the same way, I often hear people express sincere gratitude in the wrong direction. On social media platforms, New Age influencers have instructed millions to thank “the universe” for their blessings. I’ve heard many others, for lack of clarity, “thank their lucky stars”, “thank heavens,” or “thank the man upstairs.”
That’s better than nothing, I suppose, but if you really want to get unstuck, let your gratitude give way to intimacy with the Giver of all good things by thanking Him by name: Jesus Christ, the one true God, Immanuel, God with us, the Savior of all mankind! Make a habit of saying His name. Exalt Him! Magnify Him like Mary did.
When you’re stuck, worship Him. And once He gets you out of the rut, keep worshiping Him! He is worthy of all our praise and exaltation.
