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40-Minute Bible Studies
Living a Life of True Worship
This brand new Bible study series from beloved Bible teacher Kay Arthur and the teaching staff of Precept Ministries tackles important issues in brief, easy-to-grasp lessons you can benefit from personally or as part of a small group. Each book in the series includes six 40-minute studies designed to draw you into God’s Word through basic inductive Bible study. As Kay explains, "Rather than simply reading or listening to what others say about a subject, you are going to see for yourself what God says about it."Join one of the world’s most respected Bible teachers in a study that will revolutionize your thinking--and your life.
There are as many viewpoints, styles, and preferences about worship as there are people who worship. And the Bible says worship is something everyone does. So how do you know which approach is best? And how do you make sure the goal of your worship is appropriate?
This helpful study examines what the Bible says about true worship. You'll discover that we are created for the purpose of worship. And you’ll explore solid, biblical principles for making worship a lifestyle of grateful response to your Creator and Redeemer.
Let Kay Arthur and Bob and Diane Vereen guide you into the rich scriptural truths about this important subject.
There are as many viewpoints, styles, and preferences about worship as there are people who worship. And the Bible says worship is something everyone does. So how do you know which approach is best? And how do you make sure the goal of your worship is appropriate?
This helpful study examines what the Bible says about true worship. You'll discover that we are created for the purpose of worship. And you’ll explore solid, biblical principles for making worship a lifestyle of grateful response to your Creator and Redeemer.
Let Kay Arthur and Bob and Diane Vereen guide you into the rich scriptural truths about this important subject.
- GenresChristianityChristian
96 pages, Paperback
First published July 24, 2001
15 people are currently reading
71 people want to read
About the author
Kay Arthur
473 books263 followersKay Lee Arthur was an American Christian author, Bible teacher, and co-founder of Precept Ministries International. Renowned for her accessible and inductive approach to Bible study, she helped millions engage deeply with Scripture. Arthur began her ministry informally, teaching teenagers in her living room alongside her second husband, Jack Arthur. Their work soon grew into a global outreach, headquartered in Chattanooga, Tennessee, under the name Precept Ministries International. She hosted the daily Bible teaching program Precepts for Life and became a respected voice in evangelical circles. Arthur authored numerous books and was a four-time winner of the ECPA Christian Book Award for titles such as A Marriage Without Regrets and The New Inductive Study Bible. Her ministry was rooted in a personal reawakening to faith in the early 1960s, following a divorce and a return to religious life. She and Jack also served briefly as missionaries in Mexico before founding their ministry. Arthur remained active in public faith-based initiatives into her later years and was known for her firm stances on social issues. She passed away on 2025 leaving behind a lasting legacy in Christian education and publishing.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 23, 2023
I have done half a dozen of the 40-minute Precept Bible studies, and this is by far my favorite.
It was slow-going for my group who had little knowledge of the Old Testament, but even though it was arduous, it was worth it because we saw the importance of the OT for understanding the New. For the first four weeks the study focuses on the tabernacle and each of its utensils. The last two weeks show how every piece of the tabernacle was a prefiguration of Christ and His ministry.
Very enriching. This was my fourth time to do this particular study, and it never gets boring.
It was slow-going for my group who had little knowledge of the Old Testament, but even though it was arduous, it was worth it because we saw the importance of the OT for understanding the New. For the first four weeks the study focuses on the tabernacle and each of its utensils. The last two weeks show how every piece of the tabernacle was a prefiguration of Christ and His ministry.
Very enriching. This was my fourth time to do this particular study, and it never gets boring.
May 15, 2021
Oftentimes in the summer, I read or reread the Psalms or something on worship. I do this because summers are often physically demanding for me and I need the emotional lift of praising God, and because studies on worship tend to be a lighter study after deeper ones of the school year. It gives my brain a rest.
I knew that Kay Arthur's studies do tend to be more detail oriented - well, more like actual studies than devotionals - and I felt like this might be a good fit for me this year, when I wanted something a little deeper to hang onto.
It was entirely not what I expected. It was not at all about the many attributes of God for which we worship Him or the many good gifts for which we give Him thanks. Instead, it traced the history of worship and the prescription of worship that God gave us.
It was "light" for Kay Arthur in that it didn't involve any homework and that it let us through the paces, step by step. But because there was no homework, just weekly group sessions, and because I am not doing this with a group, I found myself doing a week's worth in a day. So, it was much shorter than I had intended.
I doubt people will get as much out of it as I did if they don't do the little drawings in the text. Don't skimp on doing this part.
I did learn interesting things in this study - that the 1st time worship is mentioned in the Bible is with the story of Abraham preparing to sacrifice Isaac. (It is also where love and obedience are mentioned for the first time.)
I had actually gone through a similar study before, a long time ago, on comparing each item in the tabernacle to Jesus in different ways. It was in Hannah Whitall Smith's Bible commentary on the Bible, "What the Bible is All About." She even made Leviticus sound interesting and her works encouraged me to read through the Bible, even Leviticus, for the first time as a teen. She called Leviticus God's "picture book of the Bible" because each of these things gives a picture of Jesus.
Kay Arthur et al did a good job showing us these aspects of Jesus and His fulfillment of these pictures, passages from the New Testament and many reasons for us to be grateful.
I also liked their evaluation of what it means to worship God "in spirit and in truth." (John 4:24). I always took "in truth" to mean not hypocritically, not just outwardly, making a show, but inwardly, from the heart, not just lip-reading or lip-service, but heart deep.
This book takes the view that "in truth" means something deeper than that, all the way to the truth of God's Word. In answer to the lady's question about where to worship, it's implied that the Samaritans were not worshipping according to God's truth because it was not centered in Jerusalem, and that a new day was coming and has come, when worshipping in spirit and in truth would be with the fuller truth of Jesus' fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecies and structures. Not merely not hypocritically, but also centered on the full truth of the Word of God.
I don't want to make too big a deal with the next topic because this book did give a better answer elsewhere, but it asked, "When you personally worship God, what do you put your confidence in? Is it in the flesh - the feeling and experiences of the flesh, the posture of the flesh - or in your heart, in the inner man that wants to honor God as God, to respect Him, to obey Him - to commune with Him?" The real answer is in neither. I can deceive myself into thinking I'm pious, too, and that gets me nowhere. Wanting to honor God and draw near Him doesn't make it so. Our confidence in drawing near is in Jesus, not even in our innermost intentions. (Hebrews 10:19, as the book quoted earlier.)
Also, in Jesus' conversation about tradition vs God's commands (Mark 7), this book equated tradition with "the emotional, the sensational, the experiential, the testimonies, and the latest faddish teaching." I suppose any of those things could become tradition at odds with the Word of God. But I think of tradition as being something else entirely - when to stand, when to sit, what to say, the order of the worship service, what is read for specific holidays, perhaps even the lighting of candles at certain times - even having turkey for Thanksgiving. It's only when these things are given more authority than scripture or become contrary to scripture that there's a problem. I think that Jesus was referring more to the traditions of the oral Torah (which is different than the written Torah of our Old Testament.) The oral Torah was by different authors, rabbis, than the written Torah, and they did not claim to be inspired and often did not agree with each other.
Oddly enough, I have seen a recent resurgence of something from the Oral Torah, opposed to scripture and that people are trying to make take precedence over it. Jesus says no.
I've also done and enjoyed Kay Arthur's "Loving God and Others" and "Lord, Teach Us to Pray."
For serious readers who want more on the subject of worship as God prescribed it, I have read "The Necessity of Reforming the Church," in particular about the Biblical story of Nadab and Abihu, about what happened when they changed the worship service to add "unauthorized fire" or "unfamiliar fire" in Leviticus 10:1-3. That story takes off after all the setup that Kay Arthur et al did with the tabernacle. "The Necessity ..." was detailed and somewhat dry reading that I read so long ago that I can't really comment on the book as a whole. There were other topics; that one stayed with me. Of the two books, I would recommend this Kay Arthur one more, and Calvin's "The Necessity of Reforming the Church" only if one wanted further reading.
I knew that Kay Arthur's studies do tend to be more detail oriented - well, more like actual studies than devotionals - and I felt like this might be a good fit for me this year, when I wanted something a little deeper to hang onto.
It was entirely not what I expected. It was not at all about the many attributes of God for which we worship Him or the many good gifts for which we give Him thanks. Instead, it traced the history of worship and the prescription of worship that God gave us.
It was "light" for Kay Arthur in that it didn't involve any homework and that it let us through the paces, step by step. But because there was no homework, just weekly group sessions, and because I am not doing this with a group, I found myself doing a week's worth in a day. So, it was much shorter than I had intended.
I doubt people will get as much out of it as I did if they don't do the little drawings in the text. Don't skimp on doing this part.
I did learn interesting things in this study - that the 1st time worship is mentioned in the Bible is with the story of Abraham preparing to sacrifice Isaac. (It is also where love and obedience are mentioned for the first time.)
I had actually gone through a similar study before, a long time ago, on comparing each item in the tabernacle to Jesus in different ways. It was in Hannah Whitall Smith's Bible commentary on the Bible, "What the Bible is All About." She even made Leviticus sound interesting and her works encouraged me to read through the Bible, even Leviticus, for the first time as a teen. She called Leviticus God's "picture book of the Bible" because each of these things gives a picture of Jesus.
Kay Arthur et al did a good job showing us these aspects of Jesus and His fulfillment of these pictures, passages from the New Testament and many reasons for us to be grateful.
I also liked their evaluation of what it means to worship God "in spirit and in truth." (John 4:24). I always took "in truth" to mean not hypocritically, not just outwardly, making a show, but inwardly, from the heart, not just lip-reading or lip-service, but heart deep.
This book takes the view that "in truth" means something deeper than that, all the way to the truth of God's Word. In answer to the lady's question about where to worship, it's implied that the Samaritans were not worshipping according to God's truth because it was not centered in Jerusalem, and that a new day was coming and has come, when worshipping in spirit and in truth would be with the fuller truth of Jesus' fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecies and structures. Not merely not hypocritically, but also centered on the full truth of the Word of God.
I don't want to make too big a deal with the next topic because this book did give a better answer elsewhere, but it asked, "When you personally worship God, what do you put your confidence in? Is it in the flesh - the feeling and experiences of the flesh, the posture of the flesh - or in your heart, in the inner man that wants to honor God as God, to respect Him, to obey Him - to commune with Him?" The real answer is in neither. I can deceive myself into thinking I'm pious, too, and that gets me nowhere. Wanting to honor God and draw near Him doesn't make it so. Our confidence in drawing near is in Jesus, not even in our innermost intentions. (Hebrews 10:19, as the book quoted earlier.)
Also, in Jesus' conversation about tradition vs God's commands (Mark 7), this book equated tradition with "the emotional, the sensational, the experiential, the testimonies, and the latest faddish teaching." I suppose any of those things could become tradition at odds with the Word of God. But I think of tradition as being something else entirely - when to stand, when to sit, what to say, the order of the worship service, what is read for specific holidays, perhaps even the lighting of candles at certain times - even having turkey for Thanksgiving. It's only when these things are given more authority than scripture or become contrary to scripture that there's a problem. I think that Jesus was referring more to the traditions of the oral Torah (which is different than the written Torah of our Old Testament.) The oral Torah was by different authors, rabbis, than the written Torah, and they did not claim to be inspired and often did not agree with each other.
Oddly enough, I have seen a recent resurgence of something from the Oral Torah, opposed to scripture and that people are trying to make take precedence over it. Jesus says no.
I've also done and enjoyed Kay Arthur's "Loving God and Others" and "Lord, Teach Us to Pray."
For serious readers who want more on the subject of worship as God prescribed it, I have read "The Necessity of Reforming the Church," in particular about the Biblical story of Nadab and Abihu, about what happened when they changed the worship service to add "unauthorized fire" or "unfamiliar fire" in Leviticus 10:1-3. That story takes off after all the setup that Kay Arthur et al did with the tabernacle. "The Necessity ..." was detailed and somewhat dry reading that I read so long ago that I can't really comment on the book as a whole. There were other topics; that one stayed with me. Of the two books, I would recommend this Kay Arthur one more, and Calvin's "The Necessity of Reforming the Church" only if one wanted further reading.
October 14, 2012
True worship starts with a total surrender of self to God.
July 9, 2010
"Living a Life of True Worship" is a no homework, 6-week-long Bible study. It's designed for small groups to do together once a week in a 40 minute period. The Bible study pretty much let Scripture speak for itself and explored what the whole Bible taught on the subject. The lessons were about what worship actually is, the tabernacle/Old Testament worship and how Jesus fulfilled that in the New Testament, and then how to apply what we've learned so that--as followers of Jesus--we can worship God "in spirit and in truth."
The study had people read several verses (which were included in the book along with information about the context of the verses), mark/highlight certain words, then answer several questions about what was just read. Insight boxes were included with historical information that helped make a verse or point more understandable. This study also included line drawings of the layout of the tabernacle and its furniture (altars, lamp stand, etc.).
The questions were helpful in focusing attention on all the points that needed to be looked at. In case you missed a point, the "wrap up" section at the end of each week's lesson summarized what was learned that week.
I really enjoyed this study and learned some new things. Overall, I'd highly recommend this Bible study to all Christian believers as it really puts things into perspective.
The study had people read several verses (which were included in the book along with information about the context of the verses), mark/highlight certain words, then answer several questions about what was just read. Insight boxes were included with historical information that helped make a verse or point more understandable. This study also included line drawings of the layout of the tabernacle and its furniture (altars, lamp stand, etc.).
The questions were helpful in focusing attention on all the points that needed to be looked at. In case you missed a point, the "wrap up" section at the end of each week's lesson summarized what was learned that week.
I really enjoyed this study and learned some new things. Overall, I'd highly recommend this Bible study to all Christian believers as it really puts things into perspective.
December 22, 2009
I finished this at Bridgeway in the spring of last year. This is the first Precept course at Bridgeway I helped teach w/ Marcia and Andy
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews