There seems to be a lot of emphasis these days on worship. And I, for one, am glad.

Christians are compelled by the scriptures we hold dear to sing praises to the Father. We are instructed to enter His gates with thanksgiving and to come into His courts with praise. The Psalmist says, "Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!"

We need to praise Him. We need to worship him with instruments and song and dance. We need to praise Him with our whole hearts.

But there is another aspect to our relationship with God the Father. It's called partnership.

When we worship God we are plugging into the power source we need to walk as believers in the world. That's where the passion comes from. But God says we need to ask if we are to see Him work in our world. Even in the Lord's Prayer, we see these two aspects of our relationship positioned right next to each other.

Jesus tells us to pray "Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed (holy, set apart) be thy Name." There's the worship component. "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." That's the partnership component.

We worship Him, and then we ask Him to intervene in our world.

Too many times we spend our time with God in the realm of worship and we get such a warm feeling there that we forget we need to be about the Father's business. We need to be praying for others. We need to be reaching out to those around us. We need to be looking for ways to make someone's life better through our relationship with God. We need to funnel the power that comes from our worship -- the passion that arises when we are connected to the saints and to the throne of God through our own praise -- to a hurting world through prayer and through speaking into the lives of others as God directs.

Don't get me wrong, if I could I would worship Him "from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same," as the Psalmist says. But our relationship with the Father can't stop there.

On the other hand, for years many Christians were very good at doing the practical part of the equation, i.e. praying for others and sending missionaries overseas, etc. But they lacked true worship in their lives. They lacked the component that was meant to empower us. For many years, we did what we could do without the power and passion we were meant to glean through worship and praise.

It's a two part deal. Passion and partnership. Worship and prayer.

We need both.