What must we do to become worshippers of God? At what point do we transition from learners who offer little more than emotional or intellectual assent, to become people who offer something more? We’ve all heard things that we agree with, good ideas that we believe are worth repeating. But after all the good ideas are thought and said, then said again, what comes next? Is it just more talking? What is needed most after all the talking is action.

While learning and the acquiring of knowledge are great goals, human beings are more than our brains. We were giving beating hearts, hands and feet for a reason. Maybe that reason is because we were designed for a journey. We were made for a quest.

For the believing man or woman our quest is a life of worship. Now, don’t get me wrong, worship is certainly an interior thing. Worship first begins in our spirits, in our hearts or otherwise said, in our minds. Worship begins with intentional reflection on the ideas we’ve learned and beliefs that we have taken into our hearts. We assign value to the moments and ideas that inspire us. We do this because ideas and experiences that we live add value to our lives. We hold certain values in high esteem.

But worship is far more than simply assigning value to our intellectual assents and core beliefs. Worship is drawn out of us from our experience with God. A life of worship is a life of action. A life of worship is the doing beyond our believing. Our worship can only become real when we act out our beliefs. To worship is to dive headlong into moments in which we fully engage our ideas and values turning them into tangible action which transforms us. A life of worship reminds us that we are on a supernatural odyssey. We are on a quest to become more then mere humans as we embrace the supernatural, participating in the life of God.

I am thankful for the myriad experiences I have had in my life to experience God. I’m grateful that my life has been steered in a direction that encouraged me to engage in the life of God. From the time that I was a child I learned some of His attributes, His desires and His values. Even though at the time I was unaware of it, a process had begun its work in me to shape my heart to continue a lifelong quest of God.

This process primed the pump for me to want to know what pleases God and what displeases God, to learn what He values and to eschew all things that were worthless. I was being discipled by my parents, youth ministers and a “great cloud of witnesses” who were questing for answers to the same questions. Even more, I am thankful that when I forgot that I was made to quest after God, there were other questers who disciplined me, reminding me to be who I was made to be.

As the season of Thanksgiving approaches, I give thanks to God that there is a richer experience in knowing Him. I’m grateful that he calls us to a life of action that allows each of us to fully experience him as we engage in the life God. And I’m even more grateful that we can serve Him together as we come to know God and build his kingdom here on earth.