by Joey Davis
It was just a cheap watch. It didn't seem like very much. Dad acted like it was a Rolex.
He had broken his only watch two weeks earlier, so my brother and I decided that a watch would be the perfect Father's Day present We scraped together all of the money that we had saved from doing chores and went to buy it. It cost us a little over forty dollars. In 1979 that was a pretty good chunk of change, but we would have spent more if we had more to spend.
I often think about that watch, my dad, and all of the things that were going on between us at that time in my life. I remember him showing it off with pride. I also remember insisting that he be buried in it.
We gave him the watch because he deserved it; no more and no less. He deserved better than we could have given. Because of the depression our family went through, he had done without many things to keep food on the table and clothes on our backs. He was doing without a watch for the same reason.
We didn't give dad the watch to make ourselves feel better or to draw attention to ourselves in any way. Yet I'll never forget how good it felt to please him. He was the star of the show, the object of our adoration and honor, and it was his day. What turned this Timex into a Rolex was that it came from two boys who were willing to make sacrifices for him after all of his sacrifices for us...
...I love my heavenly Father even more. 1 worship and give praise to Him for one reason only...He deserves it! Actually, He deserves better that our feeble praise, but when. we praise Him as He desires, it is priceless in His sight
Worship that draws attention to humans is not worship at all. How we feel about worship is secondary to whether or not it is in spirit and truth ( John 4:24), and in reverence and awe ( Hebrews 12:28). These attitudes please God. The warmth we receive from praise should come from our satisfaction that God was pleased with our offering, not that we were excited by it.
I would have never mocked my father by giving him a present that I intended to keep. Worshipping with the cheer leading sessions that are so popular today are irreverent and lack true awe. They mock God because these folks are stealing the honor that should be His, and are keeping it for themselves.
In praising God, whether on Sunday morning or Tuesday afternoon, never forget that He is the one to which we offer ourselves as living sacrifices; because, at the cross, He took a licking and kept on ticking!