"So worship I the God of my fathers"
But this I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets: and have hope toward God, which they themselves allow, that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust. And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God and toward men. Acts 24:14-16
I want to be like the apostle Paul. In particular, I want to worship God like Paul worshipped God. How did he do this?
First, he worshipped God by "believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets." That is to say, Paul believed everything written down in the Holy Scriptures. You cannot be a true worshipper of God apart from the direction and the counsel of the Bible. And it's not like we use the Bible as if it were merely a self-help manual. Rather, we come to it as the written word of God, inspired and inerrant. We don't just believe what we want to believe; we believe all that is written.
Second, he had "hope in God . . . that there shall be a resurrection of the dead." Paul lived in light of eternity. He lived in light of the coming judgment. Of course, that in itself could provoke terror, but Paul's hope in the resurrection was inseparable from his hope in the resurrection of Jesus Christ who was delivered for our transgressions and raised again for our justification (Rom. 4:25).
Third, he strove to "have always a conscience void of offence toward God and toward men." For Paul, religion wasn't something he used to harden his conscience or to hide his sins behind. Paul strove for universal holiness. There is no true worship without that. We must be holy if we want to be truly happy and it is impossible to truly delight and worship God apart from this holy joy in God.
Let's be like Paul, people who are Bible-believing, hope-abounding, holiness-striving people. In being this kind of person, we will then truly discover what true worship is all about.