more worship notes:

the Lord says:
"these people come near to me with their mouth and honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men."
~ isaiah 29:13

worship is not a list of activities or rituals. it is a lifestyle and an attitude of the heart. but, more than anything, it is a reaction.

Scripture tells us that we love because God first loved us. we didn't invent worship. it is our reaction to God. to His perfect love and mercy. to His holy, holy holiness.

the difference between a reaction and a response:
the response was already a fact, dormant; it is not created or provoked by a stimuli, it is only awakened.
the reaction begins its existence when the stimuli is introduced; it wasn't hiding somewhere before only to become relevant now.

when we hear, "i love you," we may respond with "i love you, too." very rarely is that a reaction . . . it's a response.

not so with God's love. God's consistent and constant "i love you"s provoke our reaction: "i love You, too." our worship is always an "i love You, too" . . . it cannot be an independent "i love you" because our love is a reaction to God's, brought into being by God's.

we love because He first loved us.