I saw in my own heart and in the ministry I participated in a sizable gulf between knowing God and worshiping him. There were workshops and seminars and book groups I could join to know God better, but I found that they had little application for my daily life (and my head and heart were swelling with pride for how much I knew). On the other hand, there were worship events and sensational conferences I could go to for the sake of worship, but I often found myself not thinking much about the content of the lyrics, and the spiritual high always left me seeking the next.

My seminary days taught me something I needed to remember: theology should always lead to worship. What we learn about God should always plunge us headlong into affection and delight and discipleship of the God we are learning about. Knowing God should always lead us into loving him more. And I wanted to create a book that would help believers bridge the gap between the two.

This book is for any believer who wants to grow in knowing God and loving him well. It’s systematic for the theologically-minded but is not a tome. It’s a worship guide for the spiritually sensitive but has deep doctrinal roots. Put simply: this book is for everyday believers who want to know God and respond to him in worship.

We can’t love someone we do not know. Just like a spouse, friend or parent, we love those well in our lives as we grow in understanding them, seeing how they operate and learning how they tick. The same is true of God. If we worship God without a thought for who he has revealed himself to be, then we are likely to find that we’ve made God in our own image, rather than letting him form our view of him (our theology) in his self revelation, which is the Word of God. 

It’s easy for us to think that theology is the “head stuff” and worship is the “heart stuff.” But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Theology is only useful in so far as it leads us somewhere; its proper application and outworking is to worship the God of our theology. The same is true of worship. Worship is only useful insofar as it can sink its teeth into something and hold onto it; its proper grounding is theology, the knowledge of God found in his Word. 

The truth is this: we find our theology—good or bad—popping up in every corner of our lives. How we view God deeply affects how we live. If we believe God to be stingy or generous, we’ll notice our prayers are fit to match. If we believe him to be absent or present, our daily lives of devotion will reflect that. This book seeks to give a foundational overview of core doctrines of the Christian faith and to help believers see how it applies to every aspect of life—from hospitality to motherhood to finances to leadership and more.

It is my prayer that believers will be excited and empowered to know God through his Word. And, that we will all grow to develop a knee-jerk reaction of taking every morsel of knowledge of God that we learn throughout our lives, turning it around in adoration and applying it in worship of God.