Worshiping God is not the same as praising God. Anyone can praise God. We can be standing in church singing, ‘To God be the glory’ and be thinking about the washing or a business deal or how many text messages are waiting to be read.
But we can’t worship God like that. We must worship in Spirit and in truth. In over-simplified terms, praise is action; worship is attitude. Our hearts must be in it.
In fact, I would go further and say that to worship effectively, it is necessary to be a child of God. Only when we enter God’s presence through faith in Jesus Christ can we really worship the Lord.
It is through the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross that our sins are forgiven and we have access to God (Romans 5:1-2). In Christ, we can stand before the Lord with uplifted face, as it were, without guilt, and freely worship him.
Worshiping does not bring us into the presence of God; it is because, through Christ, we already live in his presence, that we can worship.
To read more on this topic see Living in the Image of God, Barry Chant (Miranda: Tabor, 2012 available in eBook and Paperback) from which this edited extract is taken.