Louie Giglio: "The Air I Breathe: Worship as a Way of Life"
This is a powerful little book. It is only a hundred small pages, of very casual English, spoken English really, but it seems to shift the foundations of my life. I got into it from the extra material on Matt Redman's 'Facedown' DVD. The interwoven themes in Louie Giglio's teaching on the DVD, in Matt Redman's worship songs and in this little book have opened up ways into experiencing God as permeating all life.
"We are breathing the breath that He gave us to breathe." is a foundational idea.
The opening idea of the book - we are made to worship. It is what we do. Whether or not we know God. Whether or not we worship God. We devote ourselves, our time, our resources to something - all the time. See the first chapter at Amazon. This places worship as one of the foundations of our lives.
We are created to worship. We spend our lives declaring the worth of something. We only have one life. We should not squander it on worshipping little gods and idols made only with human imagination. We become what we worship.
Worship is our response to what we value most. That's the basic entry level definition. But Louie goes on to lead us clause by clause through a more comprehensive definition:
Worship is ...
our response,
both personal and corporate,
to God -
for who He is!
and what He has done!
expressed in and by the things we say
and the way we live.