Lifestyles Ideas Management - "Since then........

Colossians 3:1 is a significant qualifier which the chapter begins before it goes on to show us how, having been set free we can now live a new life in Christ. God’s purpose for us has always been in that sequence: redemption, righteousness, worship.
We cannot be righteous until we are first redeemed. We cannot worship until we are redeemed and righteous. God followed that sequence in Israel’s history. God delivered them out of slavery in Egypt. Then he gave them the Law at Mt. Sinai to point them to righteousness. After which he gave them the instructions for the building of the Tabernacle. If we have righteousness without redemption, our worship would become drudgery. If we have redemption without righteousness, we would make a mockery out of our worship. Anytime worship has lost its worth weariness will set in and a sense of futility of life will take over. A collapsed worship will bring about greater barrenness leading to greater weariness. Perhaps that’s the reason why we seek after novelty after novelty in our worship today. But somewhere in the midst of that ceremony and ritual, the purpose of God communing with us becomes lost.
Archbishop William Temple has given what I consider the most beautiful definition of the intent of worship: “Worship is the submission of all our nature holiness, nourishing of mind by His truth, purifying of imagination by His beauty, and opening of the heart to His love and submission of will to His purpose. All this gathered up in adoration is the greatest expressions of which we are capable.”
“In short, worship is,” as Ravi Zacharias puts it, “what binds all of life together and gives it a single focus. Conscience, Mind, Imagination, Heart, Will. All knit together in worship, for here love, reverence, sacrifice, motive, truth and obedience are harnessed before the one who made us, who alone can bring unity in the diversity with which he has fashioned us.”