“Keep you eye on the ball son”. My dad, who died when I was ten told me that a lot as he threw the baseball to me. Whether I was trying to hit the ball or catch the ball he would say, “Remember, keep your eye on the ball”.

Worship is so important to our successfully navigating the game of life. I use the word game on purpose because score is being kept.

The worship of God is the spiritual equivalent to the natural process of learning to keep our eye on the ball. Worship is keeping our eye on the Lord. We will eventually worship what we keep our eye on. Whatever we focus on we will migrate toward. Worship is deeply personal and intimate.

Abraham understood the importance of the worship of God and its connection to walking by faith and living in the miraculous interventions of God.

Genesis 22:5, “And Abraham said to his servants, ‘Settle down and stay here with the donkey, and I and the young man will go yonder and worship and come again to you.'”

Romans 4:20 Amplified, “No unbelief or distrust made him waver (doubtingly question) concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong and was empowered by faith as he gave praise and glory to God.”

Abraham is called the father of the faith, or faithful. Faith and faithfulness are inseparable. In the Greek New Testament the same word is used for both. There can be no faith without faithfulness and there is no faithfulness without faith.

Faith requires we stay faithful even when everything looks the opposite of what we believed would happen. Those who worship God remain faithful to Him [keep moving forward to accomplish the mission] even when the results that are expected do not happen.

Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego worshiped God and were thrown into the fiery furnace. Yes, they were delivered but they were willing to die for what they believed even if God did not deliver them [Daniel 3].

I call those kinds of people “but if not” people. “They said, ‘If that is the case, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O king. But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up'” [verses 17-18].

Those who possess the Kingdom of God have this kind of mindset. “I will die for the privilege of staying true to the only true God. I would rather die staying true to my God than to live a compromised life.”

Moses lived this way as well because his parents were faithful in the most dire of circumstances. Moses’ parent’s commitment to God and His purposes gave him an advantage when the time came for his faith to kick in as an adult. The decisions we make today will have an effect one way or another in our future generations.

The writer of Hebrews describes it this way in chapter eleven, verses ~

23 ~ “By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden three months by his parents, because they saw he was a beautiful child; and they were not afraid of the king’s command.”

Their faith overcame their fear. In other words their dependency on God [worship – fear, awe, respect] replaced any trepidation they had in regard to their son’s future. This reminds me of Abraham’s core value in regard to worship.

24 ~ “By faith Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter,”

25 ~ “choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin,”

26 ~ “esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt; for he looked to the reward.”

27 ~ “By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible.”

28 ~ “By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, lest he who destroyed the firstborn should touch them.”

29 ~ “By faith they passed through the Red Sea as by dry land, whereas the Egyptians, attempting to do so, were drowned.”

I want so bad to do a line upon line exegesis of these passages. But I will restrain myself and believe that another blog will address each one of them.

I do want to point out something that is extremely important and a common theme in Scripture ~ individual obedience releases a corporate blessing [breakthrough].

We need to understand that God only needs one person to stay true to Him. We get so hung up on the unfaithfulness of the multitudes and forget that if we can stay faithful He WILL move on behalf of all of us.

Verse twenty-three tells us that Moses’ parents stayed true to God and Moses manifested the same core value “when he became of age [or grew up or came to a realization of why he was on the planet]. Starting in verse twenty-four through verse twenty-eight we read how Moses made decisions ~~ by his faith in God.

A transition takes place in verse twenty-nine. “By faith THEY passed through the Red Sea . . . .” THEY [anywhere between 1.5 million and 5 million people] got the benefit [deliverance from bondage] because of the price Moses and his parents paid. Someone has to take the risk and pay the price for everyone else to benefit.

Are you the one that God is depending on to breakthrough so someone else can break out of their personal prison?

For HIS Glory!

Dr. Kevin M. Drury

A Hisstorymaker