I thank God for diversity....I love the fact that God made us all different, with different likes and dislikes and traditions and backgrounds. Think about how boring it would be if we all thought just the same. In my marriage, I have a husband who is an intellectual, while I am more of emotional, enthusiastic type of God-follower. He helps me see think I never would have noticed in scripture, and hopefully he can see God in different ways through my styles of worship and praise. I've been having some great conversations over the last few weeks about differences in worship styles (one opinion that we need to be more free in our worship, and others on the opposite side, feeling like we need to be more traditional) and what we do when we disagree, and this passage keeps coming up:

Philippians 2: 1-11 Paul hinges this whole passage on this idea, "Make my joy complete by being like-minded". Like-mindedness does not require sameness of ideas and opinions. It means relating to one another with the same mindset Jesus had, to love, sacrifice, and humble himself, as described in the rest of the passage.

I'm guilty of not always appreciating or accomodating for other likes and traditions...but I'm supposed to be following Christ's example - - one of sacrifice, of humiliy, and of putting others before myself. I can agree with you on this: God is worthy of my praise and worship, whether that is raising my hands or repeating a 200 year old prayer. I don't care how we do it, let's just do it with everything we've got!!

Lets make Christ's joy complete and be like-minded!!