When Pleasing God is Our Priority

TIME in the Word - Daily Devotional

Introduction for the Week
Giving, Praying, Fasting
When Pleasing God is Our Priority
Matthew 6:1-21

Part One
Matthew 6:1-6

When you worship God, whether at church or at home or wherever you may be, do you ever wonder or even worry about what other people present might be thinking about you? For the next few weeks we are going to take a look at a passage from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6 and investigate some of what Jesus taught about giving, praying, and fasting as we serve our God. These acts of worship are to be done with a right heart attitude, focused on God, not on ourselves. We especially should not be fashioning our worship because of what other people might think or say about us. That is an evidence that we have a greater fear of men than of God!

We will learn over these weeks to be more faithful in our giving as we seek to understand the motivation and “procedure” for giving our offerings to God. We will also take a fresh look at the “model prayer”. Then we will look at fasting, a seemingly lost act of worship in our day and time. To conclude the study, we will seek to examine our motivation in service to God and discern where our heart really is, because where our heart is, there is our treasure! What do we really treasure? How we worship will answer that question!

As we learn several facets of worship this week, I am including a devotional written from Matthew 6:1-6 that deals with our motivation for doing good as a means of the worship of God and acting towards others, ministering to them in love. I have given a format for family worship which includes a verse for the day, study of the Puritan Catechism, time in the Word, devotional thoughts, a section each day of the article “The Sin of Man-Pleasing” written by Puritan great Richard Baxter, recommended Scriptures for further study and meditation, and recommended songs to sing to God’s glory.

(The hymns are taken from our church hymnal, "The Hymnal for Worship and Celebration". Note for Church Members: If you do not have this hymnal at home, you are encouraged to take one home from church for use during the week. These hymns appear in most hymnals available today and the words are also listed in the links provided for musical accompaniment at the Cyber Hymnal.)