Ezekial 44:16

They shall enter my sanctuary, and they shall come near my table to minister to me.

Now that we have learned respect for God's holiness, we need to see that God wants us to enter in to His presence and fellowship with Him. But we also need to know that they we not doing this just so that we get blessed, but what they are doing is ministering unto the Lord, or blessing Him. God deserves out praise and worship, and we need to understand what it means to give to God what He is worthy of.

The Father bids us to come into His presence and spend time with Him.

There was a little boy in the Bible named Samuel, that before he was born his mother promised God that she would give him to Him to be his minister. When he was only about three years old his mom brought him to the temple and left him there and only got to see him once a year. He spent his whole life ministering unto the Lord. He spent so much time ministering unto the Lord that God spoke to him. But this had never happened to him before so he didn't know it was God. He thought it was Eli the priest calling him. After three times, Eli finally figured out that God was speaking to Samuel. Eli was not living very close to God at that time, even though he was the priest, so God chose to speak to a child instead. God will speak to you if you let Him. Samuel grew up to be a very wise man and God used him in a big way.

When he was an old man, God sent him to anoint another young man that loved God, to be the next king. What was his name? David! God could have chosen any one of David's brothers. They seemed, on the outside, to be very capable to handle the job. But Samuel said that man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart. Only David's heart was right before God, out of all his brothers. This is another boy who started out very young, praising and worshipping God. He wrote most of the psalms when he was a young man, still a shepherd. He loved God so much that God said he was a man after His own heart. Wouldn't you like God to say that about you? David grew up to be a very great King and did mighty things for God. But it wouldn't have happened if he hadn't taken time to minister to the Lord.

God wants us to come into His presence and spend time with Him. Worshipping in our services is a start. But it shouldn't stop there. We should be spending time with Him in our homes. Find a private place for just Him and you and spend time worshipping Him. You will become sensitive to His voice just like Samuel and David. God can do for you what He did for them, but it's up to you. You can choose to enter in to His presence, or not. He is inviting you in to the inner court. Forget everyone around you and think about God and Jesus. Just love Him and sing praise and worship to Him like you mean it.

Psalm 91:1 " You who sit down in the High God's presence, spend the night in Shaddi's shadow. Say this: "Yahweh, you're my refuge. I trust in you and I'm safe." First of all the word Shaddi means all sufficient one. Anything that you need, God's got it. So to sit in His presence means that there is nothing that you need that God can't supply. Not only that , but He is the only one that you can trust to ALWAYS be there to keep you safe.

Verse 4 " His huge outstretched arms protect you and under them you're perfectly safe, His arms fend off all harm." God can take care of it no matter what the problem.

Verse 9 "Yes, because Yahweh's your refuge, the High God your very own home, evil can't get close to you, harm can't get through the door." God is your home. You dwell in Him and He dwells in you. If you live close to God in everything you do, nothing can come against you. If someone was chasing you and you were no where near your house, you would be very scared. You would run and run and be afraid that they might catch you and hurt you before you could get home. But if you were near your house, you could just run inside and lock the door, and they could not get in. Well if you stay near God every day with Praise and Worship and quiet time with Him, you don't have to run to find Him, He's right there. But if you spend all your time doing other things and never spend any time with God, you won't know where to find Him when trouble comes.

Verse 11 " He ordered His angels to guard you wherever you go. If you stumble, they'll catch you, their job is to keep you from falling." You should also know that they only listen and obey one thing, God's Word. So if you aren't living like you should, can they protect you? NO! We must spend time with God and His word to have their protection, otherwise we are opening up the door for Satan to come. Remember I said that you could run into your house and lock the door and you wouldn't get hurt. Well that's only if we are living like God wants us to. God can only protect us if we are living for Him.

Verse 14 "If you'll hold on to me for dear life, says Yahweh, I'll get you out of any trouble. I'll give you the best of care if you'll only get to know and trust me. Call me and I'll answer, be at your side in bad times; I'll rescue you, then throw you a party. I'll give you long life, give you a long drink of salvation." All God wants is to spend time with you and He'll give you all that! He wants to take care of us first class. What a Great God we serve. He doesn't ask for much, just your time and your company. That's a cheap price to pay for all that He wants to do for us. Just say to Him "I love you God, and I thank you for all you do for me!"

How do we spend time with God? By joining in on the praise and worship in the service. Sing to Him I Chron 6:32 says that the people ministered with music before the dwelling place, until the temple was built. God wants us to worship Him. The great thing is that He gets pleasure out of it, but so do we and all the benefits that go with it. God is Good and is worthy to be praised. You can also worship Him in your own home, something that you should do everyday.

Psalm 107:30 Then they are glad because they are quiet, so He guides them to their desired haven. When we get quiet and worship the Lord, he will take you to a safe and quiet place and protect you. He loves you very much and wants to keep you safe.

All Scriptures were taken from the Message Bible.